Lisa Rothe recently directed Ellen McLaughlin in Penelope, her new one woman song-cycle, based on the women of the Odyssey.  The piece was performed at the Getty Villa in LA, with music composed by Sarah Kirkland Snider and performed by Eclipse, an LA based String quartet.

She also conceived of a chamber opera about Ada Byron and received an EST/ Sloan grant with composer Kim Sherman and librettist Margaret Vandenburg.  A workshop of Ada was performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre this past April.

Other recent directing credits include Chautauqua Theatre Company's Ah, Wilderness!; Couldn’t Say for the Midtown International Theatre Festival; Like Love for NYMF; Nowhere in America for Keen Teens; Twelfth Night for Seaside Shakespeare on Nantucket, productions for the Summer Play Festival (Split Wide Open by Christina Gorman & Anatomy 1968 by Karen Hartman); Milwaukee Shakespeare Company (As You Like It); Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre (associate director for The Persians); the New Harmony Project's workshops of David Caudle's Likeness and Austin Bunn's Timberland; 59 E 59th Street (premiere of Ellen McLaughlin's Mermaid); Yale School of Drama (The Seagull & Balm in Gilead); NYU's MFA acting program (Gum, Top Girls, Ah, Wilderness!, Stop Kiss); the Culture Project (Rebecca Hart's one woman show, Jazz Desert); the independent short film, Contemplating Emily (chosen for LA Outfest last summer); and the world premiere of Amy Kohn's radio-opera, One Plum Square for WNYC's "Spinning on Air". Lisa has also assisted playwright Ellen McLaughlin on her productions of Tongue of a Bird and Helen (directed by Tony Kushner) at New York's Public Theatre, and co-directed a reading of Ellen’s adaptation of Lysistrata at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Lisa has spent time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she worked with Jane Aronson’s World Wide Orphans and created a theatre piece with the children at Ahope Orphanage alongside theatre artists Antoinette LaVecchia, James Hallett and James Haven.  The experience culminated in a performance at the National Theatre of Ethiopia.

Future: Penelope at Gallatin/NYU and Princeton; premiere of Interpreting William by James Still at Indiana Repertory Theatre; workshop of The Harassment of Iris Malloy by Zak Berkman for Epic Theatre Center with David Strathairn and Maggie Siff; Hot L Baltimore at NYU Graduate Acting; Workshop of Ada in December at EST and in the spring with the Little Opera Company.

Lisa is a graduate of NYU's Graduate Acting Program and Director's Lab, as well as a Drama League alum, Fox Fellow, and member of the Women's Project Director's Lab. Lisa has taught and directed many prestigious theatre programs around the country including NYU's Graduate Acting Program, Yale School of Drama, The Actor's Center, Stella Adler, Long Island University, Willamette University, Cornell College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Evansville and Chautauqua Conservatory. Lisa is on faculty at New York University's School of Continuing Education, where she teaches the course, Acting for Film and Television. She is also a private acting coach.