Daniela Varon is a New York-based director and acting teacher, and a long-time member of Shakespeare & Company, where she has directed sixteen productions to date, most recently Coriolanus, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, and the regional premieres of Lindsey Ferrentino’s Ugly Lies The Bone starring Christianna Nelson and Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet starring John Douglas Thompson. She was Associate Director and Co-Founder, with Kristin Linklater, of The Company of Women, and Co-Producer, Director and Moderator of the series Conversations with Shakespeare, which played three seasons at Symphony Space.
Daniela’s work ranges from large-scale productions of Shakespeare both indoors and outdoors to one-person shows. She has directed and developed plays by Jessica Andrewartha, Jenny Lyn Bader, Robert Brustein, Lolita Chakrabarti, Emily DeVoti, Margaret Edson, Lindsey Ferrentino, Maria Irene Fornes, Jennifer Gibbs, Sally-Jane Heit, Manfred Karge, Tony Kushner, Oni Faida Lampley, Jon Lipsky, Jessica Litwak, Liz Lochhead, Melinda Lopez, Heather MacDonald, Emily Mann, Donald Margulies, Martin McDonough, Gardner McKay, Terrence McNally, Lynn Nottage, Louise Page, Suzan-Lori Parks, Harold Pinter, Jodi Rothe, Luis Santeiro, Elaine Smith, J.M. Synge, Vern Thiessen, Naomi Wallace, Wendy Wasserstein, and Shannon Woolley. Her productions have been seen at some 25 theaters around the country, and she has developed new work with another 25 companies.
Fellowships and residencies include the Drama League, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Shakespeare Society, and Voice & Vision. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, an alumna of the LCT Directors Lab, and a member of SDC.
Daniela has taught and directed at Barnard, Bennington, Dartmouth, Emerson, Purchase, and Smith Colleges, Columbia University School of the Arts, NYU/Stella Adler, and University of Connecticut. She is on the faculty of the Linklater Center for Voice and Language, and has been a Shakespeare Specialist with Lincoln Center Theater’s Open Stages program. With Walton Wilson, she has taught workshops in Bulgaria at the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory and the Plovdiv National Drama Theatre, and she has collaborated as an actor with Bulgarian director Petar Todorov and his Pro Rodopi Arts Centre.