Meet our new Artistic Director
"I'm delighted to lead Rattlestick and look forward to working with the board and staff to launch the exciting next chapter for this remarkable theater. I'm grateful to Daniella Topol for her years of excellent leadership and for the opportunity to carry her work forward. Rattlestick has long been known for inventive and ambitious new work and it will continue to be a theater focused on the future of the form. Rattlestick is also a community-centered civic space, and I look forward to deepening our invitation to artists and community members who are looking for a place to call home. It’s thrilling to return to the downtown theater landscape where I began my career and I cannot wait to get started."
- Will Davis
WILL DAVIS is a transgender director and choreographer focused on physically adventurous new work for the stage. Davis is the first transgender person to lead a major nonprofit institution without a defined LGBTQ mission. Off-Broadway credits include: Road Show (Encores! Off-Center); India Pale Ale (MTC); Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout Underground); Charm (MCC); Men on Boats (Clubbed Thumb and Playwrights Horizons—Lucille Lortel nomination); and Duat (Soho Rep). Regional credits include: As You Like It (La Jolla Playhouse) The Swindlers (Baltimore Center Stage); Everybody (Shakespeare Theater Company); A Doll’s House, Part 2 (Long Wharf Theatre); Colossal (Olney Theatre Center and Mixed Blood Theater—Helen Hayes award for best direction); and multiple productions for ATC in Chicago where Davis also served as artistic director. Davis is a member of the TCG board of directors, and the Breaking the Binary Festival's advisory council. He is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the NYTW 2050 Directing Fellowship, the Brooklyn Art Exchange’s Artist in Residence program, and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Directing in the John Wells Directing Program at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.
Davis is proud of the work he did in Chicago, and looking forward to the opportunity to lead in New York. “Rattlestick has always been a home for experimentation, and that has definitely been a part of what my work has been about,” he said. “There’s every possibility for us to make work that is exciting, that pushes the form, and that also feeds and sustains the theater.” Davis will start working alongside current Artistic Director Daniella Topol in the coming weeks, and will assume the artistic director position full-time on May 1.
“We are thrilled to welcome Will Davis to Rattlestick Theater. Will’s care and commitment to developing new artists, creating innovative spaces to share their work, and elevating voices that need to be heard make him the ideal person to lead Rattlestick’s artistic vision forward. We are excited for him to join our community and look forward to the conversations he will produce and foster at the theater’s helm."
- Jeff Thamkittikasem, Rattlestick Board Chair