Lileana Blain-Cruz is a theater director in New York City. In 2017, Blain-Cruz won the Obie Award for Direction for Suzan Lori-Parks’ The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World presented at Signature Theatre. She was a 2050 Directing Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and an Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage. She received her MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama. Blain-Cruz’s recent productions include Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gurls at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, Anna Zeigler's Actually at the Manhattan Theater Club in association with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Dominique Morisseau's PIPELINE at Lincoln Center Theater, Henry IV, Part One at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Bluest Eye at The Guthrie Theater, and War at Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 and Yale Repertory Theater, to name a few.


Portrait photo by Sarkis Delimelkon.