ALIZA SHANE is a director, playwright and producer in NYC. She works with her actors in a collaborative

process, creating organic characters borne out of movement and improvisation in addition to the written

word. Born and raised in New York, Aliza has a BA in Theatre from Queens College and has been successfully

working in the NYC  Off Broadway world for eight years.

 

Aliza is the former Assistant Managing Director at Looking Glass Theatre where she worked tirelessly to

expand upon the theatre’s vision of a theatre where a woman’s voice could be expressed, creating and

producing plays with a strong female vision and with major roles for women.

 

At Looking Glass, Aliza began as an assistant director/stage manager in the Spring Writer/Director Forum,

a festival of new works and re-worked classics written and directed by women. She went on to direct four

new works as part of the Writer/Director Forum, garnering multiple Forum Awards, including her original adaptations of Molière’s The Misanthrope, set in a rock n’ roll high school and The Imaginary Invalid, featuring a pill-popping mother in place of a hypochondriac father.​

 

With Looking Glass Theatre, Aliza wrote and directed three successful main stage productions: Are You There Zeus? It’s Me, Electra, a tragicomedy based on the classic Greek tragedy of Electra full of teenage angst and 90’s grunge, The Spanish Wives: A Groovy Tale of Peace, Love and Restoration, a groovy story set in the hippie streets of San Francisco, based on the restoration era play The Spanish Wives, and The Three Sillies, a original and very silly children’s show loosely based on an English folktale of the same name, for which she earned a 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Short Script. Aliza also developed and produced the successful staged reading series 5 Shorts for 5 Bucks!, a series of readings with themes based on each Looking Glass mainstage production. For each installment of the series, Aliza named the theme, recruited actors, directors, and playwrights, chose scripts and casts, all in addition to writing two original 10 minute plays and directing five times in the series.

 

Aliza went on to become the Producer of the Writer/Director Forum. She was soon named an Artistic Associate and staff member of the theatre, moving up to become Assistant Managing Director, until August 2012, when she left to create her own theatre company,  3 Voices Theatre, with fellow artists Jenn Tufaro and Chanda Calentine.

 

Aliza wrote and directed The Imaginary Invalid: By Prescription Only, based on Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid, as part of the inaugural year of NYC’s Planet Connections Festivity. The show garnered Aliza the Award for Outstanding Overall Production of a Revival/Adaptation for writing, directing and producing. Are You There Zeus? It’s Me, Electra was revived at the following Planet Connections Festivity, where it opened to rave reviews and earned Aliza the Award for Outstanding Direction.

 

Other credits include her work with Genesis Repertory, directing Hamlet, The First Quarto, and co-directing The Bacchae, (Cypreco Theatre Co.) which was performed, among other places, at the Cyprus Consulate and the HBO Summer Stage.  She directed the showcase Cabaret: A New World (Towards Truth Productions) at the Marriot Hotel, and The Acoustic Nerve by Kelly R. Haydon(Groove Mama Ink) at the Gene Frankel Theatre.

 

Aliza most recently began her own theatre company, 3 Voices Theatre. She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the company, working alongside long time collaborator and friend Jenn Tufaro. 3V has produced two staged reading events in 2013; Threesomes and Say Uncle! In Threesomes, Aliza wrote the 10-minute play Where Have All the Froggies Gone? and directed The Win-Ners by Jen Browne.  As part of Say Uncle!, Aliza wrote the 10-minute play Patrue Mi Patruissimo and directed I Heart Uncle Jesse by 3V co- artistic director Jenn Tufaro.   Aliza is

currently writing a new show, Mein Uncle. set to be produced in May 2014 by 3V Theatre.