Carl Cofield, Associate Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Chair of NYU’s Grad Acting Program, and Evan Yionouls, director, educator, and Head of Juilliard’s Drama Division, will join The Actors Center’s Resident Company in June to work on Ancient Greek plays and contemporary adaptations, as well as the work of French playwright Molière.
Carl Cofield is a New York based director, actor, and teacher, and is currently Chair of New York University’s Grad Acting Program and Associate Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem, where he has directed Seize the King, The Bacchae, A Christmas Carol in Harlem, Antigone, The Tempest, Macbeth, and Dutchman. Other directing credits include Twelfth Night (Yale Rep); King Lear (St. Louis Shakespeare); One Night in Miami (Rogue Machine Theater; Denver Center; Los Angeles NAACP Award, Best Director); A Raisin in the Sun (Two River Theater Company); Henry IV Part 2 (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Disgraced (Denver Center); and The Mountaintop (Cleveland Play House), among others.
Carl’s acting credits include Manhattan Theater Club (Ruined), Berkeley Rep, Alliance Theatre, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theater, Intiman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Milwaukee Rep, Alabama Shakespeare, McCarter Theatre, The Acting Company, The Studio Theatre, and many others.
In addition to his role at NYU Grad Acting, he has taught at Columbia University, Yale School of Drama, The New School, and Manhattan School of Music. He holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.
Evan Yionoulis, an Obie award-winning director and nationally recognized teacher of acting, is Juilliard’s Richard Rodgers dean and director of the Drama Division. Previously she spent 20 years on the faculty of Yale School of Drama, where she was a professor in the practice of acting and directing and Lloyd Richards chair of the department of acting from 1998 to 2003.
She has directed new plays and classics in New York, across the country, and internationally, including Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (world premiere) and Ohio State Murders (Lortel Award, best revival) for Theatre for a New Audience, Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour (Broadway), Three Days of Rain (Obie for direction, Manhattan Theatre Club), and Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theater), and, during her 20 years as a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre, productions including Shakespeare’s Richard II and Cymbeline, Brecht’s Galileo, Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss. With composer/lyricist Mike Yionoulis, she is developing the multi-platform project Redhand Guitar, about five generations of musicians across an American century, and The Dread Pirate Project, about identity and anonymity across the digital and natural worlds.
She is a Princess Grace Award recipient and serves as president of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Her book, Listening and Talking: A Pathway to Acting, was published by Methuen Drama in December 2023.
