About Mina

Freelance Director, Artistic Leader, and Artistic Activist

Mina Morita (she/her) is a celebrated new plays director, who has worked at: The Guthrie Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Center REPertory Company, American Conservatory Theater, Campo Santo, Shotgun Players, Playwrights Foundation, TheatreFirst, Ferocious Lotus, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Berkeley Playhouse, and Crowded Fire with such creators as Susan Soon He Stanton, Qui Nguyen, Anna Deavere Smith, Star Finch, Dipika Guha, J.C. Lee, Christopher Chen, Lauren Gunderson, Isaac Gomez, Philip Kan Gotanda, Young Jean Lee, Idris Goodwin, Lloyd Suh, Dave Harris, Adam Chanzit, Sean San Jose, Min Kahng, Wes Nisker, and Dustin Chinn. Upcoming, she will be directing Dipika Guha’s YOGA PLAY at Australia’s National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre.

Mina is a recipient of the inaugural FrontOffice Mid-Career Director’s Award, Theatre Bay Area’s [TBA] Outstanding Direction of a Musical in 2014, and nominated by TBA for Outstanding Direction of a Play in 2017, as well as Shellie Awards Best Director in 2018. She was recognized as a Beinecke Fellow with Yale University in 2022.

Previously, she served as the Leader of Artistic Curation & Strategy as part of the Shared Leadership Team in 2023 and Artistic Director from 2015-2022 at Crowded Fire Theater Company. From 2011-2015, she was the Artistic Associate at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and its center for the creation and development of new work, The Ground Floor. She has also served as Board President of Shotgun Players; as a 2014 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab participant; as one of the founding members of Bay Area Children’s Theatre; as panelist with the Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Theatre Bay Area, and Hewlett Foundation; as a speaker for the Getty Leadership Summit; lead facilitator for the Lotus Playwriting Retreat with Playwriting Australia; and Guest Artist at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. In 2016, TBA awarded her the 40@40 distinction for her impact on Bay Area Theater. In 2015, Mina was honored to share her story on TEDx, and in 2016, she was chosen as one of the YBCA100, for “asking questions and making provocations that will shape the future of culture.”

Press mentions

• A powerful voice in theater returns to Berkeley Rep
• ‘An incredible process’: Crowded Fire shakes up leadership structure
• Another S.F. theater is ditching the hierarchical leadership model
• Mina Morita to Receive Mid-Career Director Grant from TheFrontOffice
• #YBCA100
• Wired Magazine
• Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation Podcast
• Breaking Down the Gates: A Conversation About Curation and Inclusion in the Arts
• Arts & Ideas at the JCCSF (Conversation with Mina Morita and Young Jean Lee)
• Addressing Anti-Blackness in Non-Black Communities of Color (video to be posted)
• Decolonizing New Play Development
• Mina Morita to speak at 2015 TEDx
• Mina Morita to succeed Marissa Wolf as Crowded Fire’s Artistic Director American Theater Magazine, February 2015
• Crowded Fire Theater announces Mina Morita as new artistic director
• “Keep an Eye On: Mina Morita, Director” Theatre Bay Area Magazine, October 2011
• Theatre Communications Group: Centering Accountability

Photos by Cheshire Isaacs / Cheshiredave Creative