Ilana Lydia

Ilana Lydia is a playwright and director, with many shows’ experience acting and designing sound, as well.  She has published two novels on Amazon and has taught theater at the university level.  She founded The Play Writes in 2018, an organization which supports playwrights and screenwriters during their entire artistic process, from pitch to submission.  In addition, she teaches a free Creativity Class through B3 Theater to teens and adults.

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Upon her return to Phoenix from her Masters program at Utah State University, Lydia started Theater In My Basement, S/W Annex with a friend, developing many new plays as a director.  She worked on the musical Where the Wild Things Are for Vagabond Youth Theatre.  After a hiatus she returned on the scene with her 2014 revival of her children’s play Rumplestiltskin’s Fire at Brelby Theatre. 

Since then, she has directed the feminist piece The Waiting Room for Mesa Encore Theatre where she took Director of the Year for a Black Box Production.  She became Associate Artistic Director for B3, then Bare Black Box Productions, in May 2017, before moving on to become the Artistic Director in September.  Lydia was the 2017 recipient of the New England Theatre Conference's Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award for her children’s play The Mulligrubs.  Working alongside coach John Perovich, she studied writing, as well as working with Brelby’s Write Club and Space 55’s Writer’s Club.  In 2019 Lydia won Laughing Pig’s ShakesSmash Festival with her work The Role of the Actor.  She has kept busy directing and producing as well as writing, bringing Droppin’ Johns, my love | my lumberjack, True Believer and The Last Castrato, A Woman on Stage, B3’s Festival of Shorts, Polyphemus, The Time Machine, be my little baby, B3’s Second Festival of Shorts, The Play of Endings, Matt & Ben, An Appeal from One of the Scummettes, The PreCog, Empty Words: An Adaptation of Crime & Punishment, Rosemary’s Baby Goes to High School, the Published Play Project, the UNPublished Play Project, Frankenstein:  Prometheus Bound, The Third Festival of Shorts, Fefu and Her Friends, Herlandia, and Sincerity Forever to the stage.  In addition to heading up B3 Theater, Lydia was also Associate Artistic Director for Aside Theatre until the pandemic.