LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ is a director from New York City and Miami and a recent recipient of an Obie Award for directing The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA The Negro Book of the Dead at Signature Theater. Recent projects include Lucas Hnath's Red Speedo at NYTW, Alice Birch's Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again at Soho Rep, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' War at LCT3 and Yale Rep, Henry IV Part 1 and Much Ado About Nothing at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Bluest Eye at The Guthrie, Christina Anderson’s Hollow Roots which premiered in the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater, Project Realms an electric pop opera performed at La Sala, a new translation of The Bakkhai at the Fisher Center of Performing Arts at Bard College, and A Guide to Kinship and Maybe Magic, a collaboration with choreographer Isabel Lewis and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at Dance New Amsterdam. She received her MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where she directed the opera Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, The Taming of the Shrew, Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys, Buffalo Maine, Cavity, and lastly Fox Play as part of the Carlotta Festival of New Plays. She was one of the co-artistic directors of the 2011-2012 Yale Cabaret, where she directed Funnyhouse of a Negro, Vaska Vaska Glöm, and SALOME. She received both the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize and the Pierre-Andre Salim Prize for her leadership and directing. She was an Artistic Associate of The Exchange and The Orchard Project, a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and an Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage. She is a graduate of Princeton University, where she is currently working on a new play GURLS as part of the opening of the new Lewis Center for the Arts. Upcoming projects include Actually at MTC, Water by the Spoonful at CTG, and The House That Will Not Stand at NYTW.