JUSTIN EMEKA

director/filmmaker

BIO

 Justin Emeka is a professional director that works nationally and internationally in theater and film.  His short film Biological was awarded "Best Short Film" at the Kansas City Film Fest International, "Audience Choice Award" at the Seattle Black Film Festival; "Best International Short Film" at the Toronto International Black and Diversity Film Festival; and "Best Visual Storytelling" at the Gary International Film Festival.  Justin Emeka is a tenured professor of Theater and Africana Studies at Oberlin College. He's served as Pittsburgh Public Theater's first Resident Director where he directed Lynn Nottage's Sweat; Christopher Demus-Scott's American Son;  August Wilson's Two Trains Running, and Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind.  He authored the acclaimed "Seeing Shakespeare Through Brown Eyes" in the best-selling Black Acting Methods. He's adapted and directed two professional productions of his own "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Romeo & Juliet" incorporating Black culture.  And he's directed three university productions of his "Macbeth", which is set in the South at the end of the Civil War. He is a Drama League fellow, and member of  SDC's Executive Board.   He s the Resident Director at Pittsburgh Public Theater. Some of his PPT productions include Off-Broadway credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet at Classical Theatre of Harlem. Other Regional productions include:  Sweat at the Philadelphia Theatre Company; Sunset Baby by Dominique Morisseau at Dobama Theatre in Cleveland; Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond at Intiman Theatre in Seattle;  Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson; Paradise Blue and Detroit ’67 by Dominique Morisseau at Karamu House in Cleveland; A Raisin in the Sun by Loraine Hansberry at the Oberlin Summer Theatre Festival and ArtsWest in Seattle.  

A long-time educator, Emeka is an Associate Professor of Theater and Africana Studies at Oberlin College where he teaches directing, acting, and Capoeira Angola.  For the Oberlin MainStage,  he directed Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (featuring Avery Brooks and Petronia Paley); Antigone by Zora Howard; Macbeth by Shakespeare; The Bluest Eye by Lydia Diamond and Wedding Band by Alice Childress.  As a guest artist at Juilliard, he directed Lucas Hnath's A Doll House pt. 2 and at NYU Grad Acting he directed and adapted Moliere's The Would-Be Gentleman into The Boougie Gentleman.  At the University of Washington's Ethnic Cultural Theatre he directed Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie; Amiri Baraka's Dutchman; and Aishah Rahman's Unfinished Women Cry in No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in a Guilded Cage.   At Yale Rep, he served as the movement coordinator and played the role of Edgar in an all-Black production of King Lear starring Avery Brooks directed by Hal Scott.  He has taught workshops at New York University, Julliard, Carnegie Mellon, Old Globe, University of Michigan, Skidmore College and more.  He is also a writer and has received awards in playwriting from the Seattle Arts Commission, and screenwriting from the Washington State Film Commission.  He also published,  "Playing with Race in the New Millennium" in the book "Casting a Movement".  

​

                                  IMMAGINATIVE APPROACHES TO EPIC AND CONTEMPORARY STORYTELLING