Josh Hecht is the Artistic Director of Profile Theatre in Portland, Oregon, which puts a single playwright at the center of the season, using her singular vision as a lens on our shared world. For Profile's 2017 Quiara Alegria Hudes season, he will direct Pulitzer Prize-winner Water By The Spoonful in rotating repertory with its sequel The Happiest Song Plays Last with the same cast and design, the first time these two award-winning plays hve been presented this way.
As a freelancer, Josh is a Drama Desk Award-winning director specializing in new plays. His productions have been seen in New York at The Duke on 42nd Street (Wearing Lorca's Bowtie, a devised piece), New World Stages (Bradford Louryk’s Christine Jorgensen Reveals – Drama Desk Award, GLAAD Media nomination), Culture Project (Drew Larimore’s Out Of Iceland), MCC Theater (Bob Morris’ Assisted Loving), The Theatre at St. Clement’s (Jake Jeppson’s The Clearing), The Cherry Lane (Megan Mostyn-Brown’s girl), 13P (Winter Miller’s The Penetration Play), the DR2 (Anna Ziegler’s BFF), PS 122 (Joseph Keckler’s JOBZ), Ars Nova (The Gay Agenda), Partial Comfort (Ross Maxwell’s Open House), Joe’s Pub, the Ontological, and others. He’s directed three plays in the New York International Fringe Festival; the first won Best Scenic Design (designer Andromache Chalfant), the second and third each won Best Ensemble.
Regional productions have been produced by the Humana Festival (Allison Moore’s Slasher), The Guthrie Theater (Megan Mostyn-Brown’s Lizards...), No Rules / Signature Theatre DC (Brian Sutow’s The Personal(s) – named one of 2013 Favorite Directors, DCMetroTheatreArts), The Berkshire Theatre Festival (Rachel Schroeder’s Heliantha), The Kennedy Center (Ping Chong and Co’s Inside / Out – writer/performer), the Boston Center for the Arts (Christine Jorgensen – IRNE nomination), Axial Theater Company (Howard Meyer’s Welcome, This Is A Neighborhood Watch Community, Megan Mostyn-Brown’s The Rest of Your Life, and Jake Jeppson’s The Clearing), and Half Moon (Annie Baker’s Circle, Mirror, Transformation). Christine Jorgensen also played internationally at the Dublin Arts Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Fringe First Award). Inside / Out has also been presented at the Flynn Center in Burlington, VT; The Round House Theater in Bethesda, MD; and the Amaryllis Theater in Philadelphia, PA.
He develops between one and two dozen plays a year at such theaters and play development centers as Signature Theatre Company (NYC), The Juilliard School, MCC Theater, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theater, The New Group, Rattlestick, LAByrinth, New Georges, The Geva, New Dramatists, New York Stage and Film, the O’Neill, the Playwrights Center, the Lark, the New Harmony Project, the Orchard Project, TheatreWorks New Play Festival, Voice and Vision, BRIC Media Arts, P73, JAW at Portland Center Stage, PlayPenn, and many others, working with such writers as Meghan Kennedy, Dan O’Brien, Mashuq Deen, Emily Schwend, Jennifer Haley, Sarah Sander, Harrison Rivers, Anna Moench, Winter Miller, Anna Ziegler, Allison Moore, Victor Lodato, Megan Mostyn-Brown, Zakiyyah Alexander, Brooke Berman, Francine Volpe, Barry Levey, Keith Byron Kirk, Jim Christy, Lachlan Philpott, and David Jacobi to name a few.
For 5 years, he was the Director of Playwright Development at MCC Theater, where he helped found and run the Playwrights Coalition, initiating a spectrum of development programs for emerging writers. While there, he worked with some of today’s most honored playwrights, including David Adjmi, Adam Bock, Brooke Berman, Julia Jordan, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Adam Rapp, Itamar Moses, Cusi Cram, and many others. Subsequently, he was Director of New Play Development at WET. He is a NYTW Usual Suspect, and an alumnus of the SoHo Rep Writers/Directors Lab and the LCT Directors Lab.
In addition to being on the faculty ESPA / Primary Stages, he has served on the faculty of Fordham MFA Program in Playwriting, the New School for Drama’s MFA Directing Program and Purchase College, SUNY’s BFA Dramatic Writing Program. He has been a Guest Director at The Juilliard School, the University of Minnesota, NYU Dramatic Writing MFA Program, Carnegie Melon MFA Playwriting Program, the Lee Strasberg Institute, and the National Theater Institute’s Directing Program. He has taught playwriting at New Dramatists, The Field, the Play Development Collective, and at World InterPlay and the Queen’s Street Studio in Sydney, Australia, and has taught devised theatre at the New School for Drama, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, ESPA / Primary Stages, and others.
Josh Hecht