BIO

Alex Mallory is the director of The Metal Shop Performance Lab, founded with the mission to create theatrical events that foster radical community-building and authentic exchange between artists and audiences. She is interested in new work and deconstructing classics through an intersectional feminist lens, with a focus on sexual health and reproductive justice for young women. 

Alex works with military veterans to facilitate healing with classical theater training through DE-CRUIT, where she is the Chicago Area Regional Coordinator. She has directed and produced veteran’s stories with Piven Theatre, The Telling Project, LaGuardia Community College, and the Veteran Artist Program, with whom she produced THE HOME SHOW at Lincoln Center in 2015.

Alex holds an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University and a BA from Stanford University where she received the Louis Sudler Prize in Creative Arts and the Sherifa Omade Edoga Prize for work involving social issues. Her masters' thesis investigates how authenticity and authorship in theatrical process helps to create productive, brave spaces for conversations on personal and collective histories of violence for artists and audience members. Associate Member, SDC. www.alex-mallory.com

INSPIRED BY

Vulnerability, ocean waves breaking over rocks, Edward Bond, Anne Carson, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, all the playwrights who break with form, the ability of my friends to survive the hardships they have endured and thrive, the power and drive of young women.

EXPLORING:

A WAKENING is a theatrical community conversation about the generational silence and shame around the sexuality of young women. I am interested in discovering how to manifest a project in which the audience and the artists are equal partners, exchanging stories and ideas to arrive at an experience that is unique to everyone involved.

INSPIRATION FOR PROJECT:

Wedekind's FRÜHLINGS ERWACHEN, Rebecca Spence in Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's EVERY BRILLIANT THING directed by Jess Fisch at Windy City Playhouse, Heidi Schreck's WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME