VANESSA OGBUEHI is a director for new and contemporary theatre. Through a maximalist aesthetic and cross-disciplinary collaboration, Vanessa pushes everyday stories to mythic proportions. Past projects include an immersive take on Fefu and her Friends at Sweet Briar College, and assistant directing Heartbeat Opera’s Lady M, which the NYT called “Flat-out brilliant.” University direction includes Orlando (Boston University), Metamorphoses (Villanova), and Resilient: Black Bottom (Drexel). Upcoming: new musical Americannibal at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and Directing Fellowship at Opera Columbus. Vanessa is a proud alum of the Drama League and a fellowship at Music Academy of the West. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Devised Performance from Pig Iron/University of the Arts.
I'm a director who loves to build things from the ground up alongside a handful of brave collaborators. I make intimate spectacles that elevate everyday stories to the level of myth. By giving our strangest, most impossible dreams the space they deserve, we can chart bold new paths for personal and social transformation.
Hey, I'm Vanessa!
Reveling in the freedom to be a mess.
I make work for intimate spaces — studios, churches, community centers, barns — where you can feel and heal under the collective warmth of strangers. Through uncanny spectacle and absurdist experiments in language, voice, music, and physical theatre, I take people’s (mostly) true life stories and elevate them the level of myth.
My aim is to throw audiences head-first into the magic space between the ordinary and the extraordinary. I lure them in with nostalgia before using a surprise twist to awaken their senses to new futures. New realities. Worlds they secretly long for but never knew existed. The experience is often confrontational, but eventually delightful. Food and drink always helps.
Storytelling is a survival tactic when I forget how to dream, hope, and fight. It’s a ritual that connects us to an expansive energy that helps us all imagine and re-imagine ourselves and our world anew.