WHO WE ARE
ELIZABETH HESS, Artistic Director
Ms. Hess is an actor, playwright, director, Arts educator and artistic director of The Hess Collective. (THC)
THC’s inaugural work, LOVE TRADE, premiered at La MaMa during their Tony-Award 2018 season. Their subsequent work, SPOILED, was in a developmental workshop at Dixon Place in 2019; the second co-production with La MaMa was postponed in 2020.
Ms. Hess’ other ensemble works include PERFECT CURIOSITY, developed at The O’Neill Theater Center/NYU; SCARBERIA, developed at TheaterLab/La MaMa; NOMADS, developed at The New Group/The Lark.
Elizabeth has performed her acclaimed solo work around the globe: DUST TO DUST in Bucharest, Kiel, Stockholm, Prishtina and New York, Off-Broadway and UN Conference on Gender Violence; LIVING OPENLY & NOTORIOUSLY, in Berlin, Bath, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Toronto, Yerevan and Off-Broadway.
Ms. Hess’ other acting credits include work with The New Group, Women’s Project, Irish Rep, MTC and NYTW in New York, as well as extensive regional theaters. TV credits include series lead in Clarissa Explains It All and numerous Indie films.
Her book, ACTING & BEING: Explorations in Embodied Performance, published by Macmillan in 2017, is based on her hybrid approach - culled from teaching acting/performance/playwriting primarily at New York University and masterclasses/ workshops internationally.
Elizabeth is the recipient of a Madolin Cervantes Grant; ITI Armmono Festival Director's Award; ITI Awards. Internationally, she was also sponsored by Regione Venezia in Italy; Columbia Global Center (CGC) in Chile; US State Department as an ACULSPEC participated in the ITI/UNESCO Conference in The Philippines; sat on the jury of the ITI Thespis Mono Festival in Germany and Saint Muse Festival in Mongolia and conducted a playwriting/acting workshop in Kosovo, resulting in the devised work, INTERNALLY DISPLACED.
MIRIAM GRILL, Managing Director
Miriam Grill is a Brooklyn-based theatre maker with many hats. She is currently the Community and Educational Coordinator at La Mama and the Operations Manager for Dances for a Variable Population (a multi-generational NYC dance company). She has a commercial background assisting on Broadway (Motown, Annie, Bring It On, etc.) and worked as a movement consultant for Cirque du Soleil in Macau (House of Dancing Waters). She was the founder and director of a university theatre department in Guangzhou China specializing in educating the next generation of female directors, produced and directed a bilingual female theatre company in Taiwan, and led youth and arts therapy programs in refugee camps on the Myanmar border. As a producer, she works on emerging technology that promote social access and equity, such as Sundance's first AI piece, Frankenstein AI and iForest at World Economic Forum in Davos 2026. She holds an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University.
VIVIAN FARAHANI, Producing Associate
Vivian Farahani is a German-Iranian theatremaker and director based in New York. A family story characterized by migration leads her to ask questions concerning the relationship between culture and behavior, examining how our history and belief systems impact our perspectives on global events and our personal relationships. In 2023, Vivian was the Directing Intern on Simon McBurney's Wozzeck at the 2023 Festival D'Aix-en-Provence. Other recent projects include Lucy Prebble's Enron on the UNCSA Mainstage, productions of Lucy Prebble's The Effect and Mike Bartlett's An Intervention in the UNCSA Keys Season, and Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Antigone. She holds a B.F.A in Directing from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
AFFILIATE ARTISTS
