About Emma

In August 2020, EMMA DENSON moved from Alabama to New York City to the couch of a Hungarian director she met on Zoom. From there, her work continued to draw influence from her two respective homes:

the large Southern family she left behind, and the international found family she met in New York.

Emma has continued to use her practice to elevate Southern stories and artists. Her commissioned play, The Opioid Project, which she directed and co-wrote, was distributed to underserved high schools across Mississippi. In 2022, she directed Emily by CAYSON MILES, which centers rights for trans youth in the South. Her play Otis & Anna, which she wrote and directed at Downtown Urban Arts Festival 2023, draws inspiration from Denson’s college mentor, a gay scenic designer in Mississippi. The play asks the question: “what happens to unpartnered people when they get sick?”, and was awarded Best Short at the festival. Most recently, Emma partnered with her Alabama acting teacher, DARREN BUTLER to direct his and JUDY RODMAN’s new musical Runaway Home. The original rock/pop musical addresses the urgent topics of teen runaways, sex trafficking, and homelessness. The reading features a cast of ABIGAIL BRESLIN, MICHAEL PARK, MELISSA GILBERT and others.

In August of 2021, Emma began collaborating with director COLM SUMMERS. She assisted him on two shows at Columbia University (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Blanche and Stella). Emma then traveled to Ireland in June 2022 to assist him on Purgatory: After Yeats (a show Colm wrote with CIARA NI CHUIRC). This year, Emma assisted him in residence at BRIC in Brooklyn, and served as Associate Director and Co-Deviser on The Keening with Summers and Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe at Berkeley Rep Ground Floor (where she got to sing in ancient Irish!).

Much of Emma’s work in New York has involved international and intercultural collaborations. She has worked on shows at Irish Arts Center, The Irish Rep, and is the Associate Director at Origin Theatre Company. In Fall of 2022, she worked with a primarily Italian team to create a bilingual dance/theatre piece based on The Taming of the Shrew. In March, for Women’s History Month, she wrote and directed a short piece, sub[vert]way, for Mujerstory at the Latinx led IATI Theater. Most recently, she’s been partnering with The Ukrainian Museum of New York and the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America to develop a bilingual adaptation of Bohdan Boychuk’s Hunger, a play about Holodomor: Stalin’s genocide, via famine, of Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. The project was created in collaboration with the Ukrainian community to raise awareness for the ongoing war in Ukraine.

In June 2024, Emma will head to Toronto, Canada to participate in Director’s Lab North 2024.

Specializations

EMMA’S CREATIVE WORK primarily lives in the intersection of theatre and activism. Whether it’s the incorporation of gender studies (her work is decidedly feminist) into her practice, or directly collaborating with the communities represented in her plays, Emma directs plays that are created with our nation’s, and our world’s, most pressing issues in mind.

Physicality and imaginative freedom are two other pillars to her process, and they are equally important. Emma aspires to awaken the audience’s inner sense of play.

TOP TEN FAVORITE PLAYS

  1. Betrayal by Harold Pinter

  2. King Lear by William Shakespeare

  3. Bent by Martin Sherman

  4. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

  5. Hunger by Bohdan Boychuk

  6. Top Girls by Caryl Churchill

  7. Angels in America by Tony Kushner

  8. Our Town by Thornton Wilder

  9. The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

  10. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

For Emma’s Assistant Directing page, click here.

To preview Emma’s scenic portfolio, click here.