Josh Hecht

Teaches at Primary Stages ESPA

Josh Hecht is a Drama Desk Award-winning director specializing in New Plays and New Play Development. His productions have been seen in New York at The Duke on 42nd (Wearing Lorca's Bowtie, a devised piece), New World Stages (Bradford Louryk's Christine Jorgensen Reveals – Drama Desk Award, GLAAD Media nomination), Culture Project (Drew Larimore's Out Of Iceland), MCC Theater (Bob Morris'sAssisted Loving), The Cherry Lane (Megan Mostyn-Brown's(girl), 13P (Winter Miller's The Penetration Play), the DR2 (Anna Ziegler's BFF), PS 122 (Joseph Keckler's JOBZ), Ars Nova (The Gay Agenda), Partial Comfort (Ross Maxwell's Open House), Joe's Pub, the Ontological and others.  
 
Regional productions at the Humana Festival (Allison Moore's Slasher), The Signature Theatre, D.C. / No Rules (Brian Sutow's The Personal(s)), The Guthrie Theater (Megan Mostyn-Brown's Lizards...), The Berkshire Theatre Festival (Rachel Schroeder's Heliantha), the Boston Center for the Arts (Christine Jorgensen – IRNE nomination), Axial Theater Company (Howard Meyer's Welcome, This Is A Neighborhood Watch Community and Jake Jeppson's The Clearing) and Half Moon (Annie Baker's Circle, Mirror, Transformation). Christine Jorgensen also played internationally at the Dublin Arts Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Fringe First).  
 
His writing has been seen in Inside / Out, commissioned by the Kennedy Center and created with Ping Chong and Company.  Inside/Out premiered at The Kennedy Center and toured to the Flynn Center in Burlington, VT; The Round House Theater in Bethesda, MD; the Amaryllis Theater in Philadelphia, PA and The Times Center Stage in New York.  His writing also appeared in Wearing Lorca's Bowtieat The Duke.
 
He develops between one and two dozen plays a year in readings and workshops at such theaters and development organizations as Signature Theatre Company, The Juilliard School, MCC, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theater, Rattlestick, LAByrinth, New Georges, The Geva, New Dramatists, New York Stage and Film, the O'Neill, the Playwrights Center, the New Harmony Project, the Orchard Project, Voice and Vision, P73, JAW at Portland Center Stage, PlayPenn, the Great Plains Theatre Conference and many others.  
 
For 5 years, he was the Director of Playwright Development at MCC Theater where he helped found and run the Playwrights Coalition, initiating a spectrum of development programs for emerging writers. While there he worked with some of today's most honored playwrights including Brooke Berman, Julia Jordan, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Adam Rapp, Itamar Moses, Cusi Cram and many others. Subsequently, he was Director of New Play Development at WET. He is a NYTW Usual Suspect, and an alumnus of the SoHo Rep Writers/Directors Lab and the LCT Directors Lab.
 
He is currently on the faculty of ESPA / Primary Stages and has previously been a faculty member of the New School for Drama's MFA program; Purchase College, SUNY's BFA Dramatic Writing Program; and the National Theater Institute's directing program, and has taught playwriting at New Dramatists, The Field, the Play Development Collective and at World InterPlay and the Queen's Street Studio in Sydney, Australia.