Lisa Portes

Lisa Portes is an educator, director, advocate and leader whose aim is to define and promote a new American narrative that is driven aesthetically and politically by the world we are becoming rather than the world we've been. She seeks to forge an American theatre that expands our understanding of who we are, blows open our assumptions of what our world looks like and extends us into the great, big, messy experience of being human in the 21st century.

Portes has created work regionally for California Shakespeare Theatre, the Cincinnati Playhouse, Children’s Theatre Company, the Denver Center, Guthrie Theatre, Olney Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Round House Theatre, Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. In Chicago she has directed projects for Goodman Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Teatro Vista, Timeline Theatre and Victory Gardens. New York credits include productions at Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep, and developmental work at New York Theatre Workshop, the Flea Theatre and the Public Theatre.

Recent projects include Quixote Nuevo by Octavio Solís (Round House, Denver Center, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, Portland Center Stage), Twelfth Night (St. Louis Shakespeare Festival), and the world premieres of Laughs in Spanish by Alexis Scheer (Denver Center) Clean/Espejos by Christine Quintana (South Coast Rep), Rightlynd by Ike Holter (Victory Gardens), I Come from Arizona by Carlos Murillo (Children’s Theatre Company) and This Is Modern Art by Idris Goodwin & Kevin Coval (Steppenwolf Theatre).

In 2016, Portes received the SDC Zelda Fichandler Award which is dedicated to “an outstanding director or choreographer who has transformed the regional arts landscape.” She is the first freelance director to have been so honored. Other awards include the TCG SPARK Leadership fellowship, the NEA/TCG Career Development grant for Directors and the Drama League Directing Fellowship.

Portes cut her teeth at UC San Diego, where she received an MFA in directing, as well as at the La Jolla Playhouse where she served as assistant and then associate director for “

Who's Tommy” staging its Toronto, London, Frankfurt, US, UK and Canadian National Tours.

Portes serves on the executive board of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and is an alumna of the board of The Theatre Communications Group. In 2012 she co-founded the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC), a national advocacy network and thinktank that promotes Latinx stories as central to the American story. She serves as champion for the LTC Carnaval—a tri-annual festival of new Latinx plays produced in Chicago. In June 2017, the LTC was honored by TCG with the 2017 Peter Zeisler Award for innovation in the American Theatre. Other awards include a Fulbright Award, the NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship for Directors and the Drama League Directors Fellowship.

How could augmented reality and artificial intelligence transform theater performances? What if aspiring directors, actors, designers and stage managers collaborated with technologists to achieve a novel innovation? And how could theater evolve if more artists, particularly from marginalized communities, had the opportunity to take center stage?

These questions are top of mind for Lisa Portes, who recently joined UC San Diego to become chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance. A highly regarded Cuban American director, educator, advocate and leader, Portes’s aim is to promote a new theater narrative that expands our understanding of the great mystery of what it means to be human.

Most recently serving as head of the MFA Directing Program at DePaul University, Portes brings more than two decades of leadership and teaching in the field. She is an award-winning director with a vibrant career directing world premiere productions nationwide at theaters such as South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep and Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Early in her career, she served as associate director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of "The Who's Tommy" and the first national tour of "Titanic."

Her thriving career started right here at UC San Diego. An alumna of the department’s MFA Directing Program, Portes knows firsthand the unique opportunities available. The Department of Theatre and Dance is consistently ranked among the top five graduate programs in the nation, offering students the chance to work with Tony award-winning faculty and apprentice at the La Jolla Playhouse, a longstanding community partner.

“This symbiotic relationship between a world class theater training program and a highly innovative, internationally renowned professional theater is unparalleled in the nation,” said Portes. “For me, my time in the MFA Directing Program was the crucible that formed me as an artist.”

This is an excerpt from a UC San Diego Today feature story. Continue reading “Acclaimed Director Lisa Portes Named Chair of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego.”