“Her work is like her personality: provocative, in your face but with a lot of style.”
Sheila Bandyopadhyay is a director, movement specialist, performer and devisor of original theater based in Brooklyn, New York. With an extensive background in new work and Shakespeare, Sheila is committed to non-traditional theatrical performance that is literary, music-driven and physical. She enjoys working on ensemble shows and innovative adaptations of classical texts.
Productions credits as a director and devisor include plays featured at the West End Theater, the 72nd St Theater Lab, the Brick, The Tank, the Boston Center for the Arts, and the Fringe Festival circuit.
Additionally, she has served as a choreographer and/or movement director for productions at Shakespeare & Company (Lenox, MA), The Humanist Project (NYC), Gallatin NYU (Hamlet, Measure for Measure, The Rape of Lucrece), FSU/Asolo (Twelfth Night, The Aliens) and numerous shows for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts Company.
As a performer, some of her favorite roles include: Tamora in Titus Andronicus (The Humanist Project), Bianca/Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew (Tempest Ladies) and Madge in DRESS (West End Theater).
Sheila is Director of Training at Shakespeare & Company’s renowned Center for Actor Training in Lenox, Massachusetts. From 2021-2022, she served as Head of the Professional Training Program and Core Movement Faculty at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA. Prior to Dell’Arte, Sheila was Head of Movement at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
Anti-Racist Ethos
I affirm that the theatre-industrial complex as it is currently constructed is predicated on racist, white body-supremacist, patriarchal and colonial practices. I am committed to creating an anti-racist theatre where we work to ensure that people of the Global Majority are valued, included and in leadership. I seek to liberate myself and others from the entrenched systems, exclusionary practices and unconscious biases that cause harm in this art form. I am a work in progress, and to that end I am actively engaged in an ongoing process to decolonize my own thinking and to undo the structures of racism that exist within me. I am committed to speaking in draft and to enacting positive change for an inclusive environment.
*Michael F. Toomey is an actor, director, fight choreographer, teacher and clown.He is a longtime member of Shakespeare & Co and co-founder/Artistic Director of The Humanist Project.