Irina Kruzhilina is an award-winning theater maker—director, scenographer, experience designer, playwright, professor, and artistic director—whose work lives at the intersection of visual art, live performance, and civic engagement. Her creative endeavors range from interdisciplinary downtown theatre to large scale parades, from opera to site responsive installations. Her work has been shown at Times Square, Tokyo, Disney, BAM, Prague National Theatre, NY Philharmonic, and Barbican Center. Irina is the founder of Visual Echo, a New York-based performance organization fostering generative dialogues among people from diverse backgrounds who rarely intersect.
In 2024, Ms. Kruzhilina launched SpaceBridge, a workshop program and performance uniting 19 refugee and American children— most of whom had never been on stage. Leading a team of 60 collaborators, she transformed their stories into a fully realized Off-Broadway production. After being named a critics' pick at the 2025 Under The Radar Festival, Irina is now expanding its workshop curriculum to develop new SpaceBridge performances with local and refugee youth in the U.S. and globally.
Irina holds the position of associate professor at the New School of Drama, where she co-developed a new MFA program in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. She is a La MaMa resident artist and recipient of the 2024 Joan D. Firestone Fund Award and the 2024 Elliot Norton Award.
