A group of actors sitting on chairs in a group onstage, one in the center holding a script and standing.

Directing Projects

6 Romances

An immersive art song performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's "6 Romances" cycle as part of the Wall to Wall Festival at the University of Michigan. Audience members walked through a dark maze built of hanging sheets to enter a chamber lit by a gaslamp as Juliet Schlefer (soprano) and Eric Head (pianist) performed the six songs on a loop in the intimate space.

A woman sitting atop a piano in a dimly lit room, with a gaslamp illuminating her from below and a cloth backdrop hanging.

Elizabeth Cree

Pulitzer Prize winners Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's 2017 opera based on the historical fiction by Peter Ackroyd takes the audience through Victorian-era London in this ninety-minute thriller featuring murder, vaudeville, drag, romance, hangings, and even more murder.

A full stage illuminated in cold lavender lighting, with a group of people surrounding a man in a suit and corset at center.

WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM?

A new horror play by Emerson Mae Smith that takes place in a pre-apocalyptic future on the banks of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula. Three queers take a camping trip that turns into a turbulent, bloody night. Staged as an immersive production in the Newman Studio as part of the Basement Arts 2022 season.

Three people chugging beers on a campground. One in a sweatshirt stands, the other two knees to chug.

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Dario Fo's 1970 political farce about police corruption, anarchism, and Italian fascism produced for the University of Michigan as Skeen's senior thesis production. Two hours of slapstick, political commentary, historical fiction, and absolute chaos that had audiences laughing up until the last moment.

A man in a suit laying on his stomach on the floor, playing with an invisible toy train.

Indecent

Produced as part of Rude Mechanicals' 2022-2023 season, Paula Vogel's Tony Winner play tells the story of another little Yiddish play through its conception to its Broadway opening and subsequent arrest. Staged in the Arthur Miller Theater as a full thrust space.

A line of actors standing still onstage, lit from the sides. Two women wear white nightgowns. Behind them projected text reads: "they feel the rain".

It's The End of the World and I Wish You Were Here

Written and directed as part of SMTD's Out of the Box initiative during 2020 to encourage digital productions, this one act follows a long distance relationship as both it and the world implode in on themselves.

Mirit Skeen

Director