Nicole A. Watson is the Associate Artistic Director at Round House Theater. She is also a freelance director and educator with an interest in new play development and plays that deal with the past. A former history teacher, Nicole works in universities and theatres throughout the US.
Nicole is a New Georges affiliated artist and has worked with New Dramatists, the Lark Play Development Center, the Fire this Time Festival, the New Black Fest, the Women's Project Theater, The 52nd Street Project, Signature Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Working Theater. Select credits include Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew (Baltimore Center Stage); Colman Domingo’s Dot (Playmakers Repertory Company); Daniel Beaty’s Mr. Joy (Cincinnati Playhouse); Kara Lee Corthron’s Welcome to Fear City (CATF, world premiere); an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (Two River Theater Little Shakespeare); Robert Schenkkan's The Great Society (Asolo Repertory Theatre); the world premiere of Kevin R. Free’s Night of the Living N-Word (New York International Fringe Festival); a workshop of Lenelle Moïses Merit (New Black Fest); Katori Hall's The Mountaintop (Kitchen Theater Company); the world premiere of the opera Approaching Ali (Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center); the world premiere of Johnna Adams’ World Builders (Contemporary American Theater Festival); Eboni Hogan’s Foreign Bodies (2013 Poetic License Festival/2012 Women’s Center Stage); We Play For the Gods (Women’s Project); BlindSight: A Melodic Hypothesis (an original work for the Women Center Stage Festival); and Daniel McCoy's Eli and Cheryl Jump (New York International Fringe Festival).
She has been a guest director at A.C.T's Conservatory (Las Meninas); Smith College (Our Lady of Kibeho); North Carolina School of the Arts (Joe Turner's Come and Gone); New York University (Born Bad; Milk Like Sugar; Ti-Jean and His Brothers); and Long Island University (Twelfth Night).
Nicole has also had the pleasure to assist Bill Rauch, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Joe Haj, Dominique Serrand, Joanna Settle, Giovanna Sardelli, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and André DeShields. She is a long-time volunteer at the 52nd Street Project where she directed A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Two Gentlemen of Verona with their teen ensemble. She was a 2015 Artist in Residence at the Drama League where she developed We Sat in the Death House, a devised movement piece with MJ Kaufman. Nicole is a 2013 Drama League Directing Fellow and the 2011 recipient of the League of Professional Theatre Women’s Josephine Abady Award.
Nicole was an invited artist at the 2011 Voice and Visions Retreat where she worked with playwright Dominique Morisseau on Paradise Blue. She is a co-founder and producer of the Working Theater Directors Lab, working with directors Rebecca Martinez and Dina Vovsi.
Nicole has been a teaching artist at the McCarter Theatre, the Tribeca Film Institute, the New York Historical Society, and the Museum of the City of New York, where she has both taught and developed curriculum for their programs. Nicole is an alum of both the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the Women’s Project Directors Lab and a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC). BA: History, Yale. MA: NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
