Justin Emeka

Justin Emeka is the resident director of Pittsburgh Public Theater, as well as a tenured professor of Theatre and Africana studies at Oberlin College.  As a director, writer, actor, and Capoeirista he specializes in new approaches to “classic” texts, as well as imaginative stagings of contemporary playwrights.   Off-Broadway credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet at Classical Theatre of Harlem; Regional theatre productions include:  American Son at Pittsburgh Public Theatre;  Sweat at Philadelphia Theatre Company; Sunset Baby at Dobama Theatre; Stick Fly at Intiman Theatre in Seattle;  Paradise Blue, Detroit ’67 and Julius X at Karamu House; A Raisin in the Sun at the Oberlin Summer Theater Festival.   At Oberlin College, he started one of the first Capoeira Angola collegiate programs and directed plays including Death of a Salesman, The Bluest Eye, Macbeth, The Compromise, Follow Me to Nellie’s and Wedding Band.  He received his MFA in Directing from the University of Washington where he also served as the Artistic Director for the Ethnic Cultural Theater and directed The Glass Menagerie, Dutchman, and Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage.  At Juilliard, he directed A Doll’s House pt. 2 and at NYU he adapted Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” into “The Boougie Gentleman”. He received awards in playwriting from the Seattle Arts Commission, and screenwriting from the Washington State Film Commission.  For Routledge press, he has published the chapters “Seeing Shakespeare through Brown Eyes” and “Playing with Race in the New Millennium”.