About
Toby Vera Bercovici is a director, adaptor, intimacy choreographer, and devised theater-maker whose work utilizes a rigorous authenticity, playful relationship with elements of style, and feminist aesthetic to help tell important stories.
She has created numerous dance-theater adaptations of classic texts, including The *Annotated* Taming: Or, Out of the Saddle, Into the Dirt and The Life and Death of Queen Margaret. She believes it is our duty as theater makers to bring the fullness of ourselves and of our present moment to the stage, while also acknowledging the political and aesthetic history out of which this presence grows. She weaves strong feminist counter-narratives into classic texts, and what emerges is work that illuminates rather than glorifies, and that juxtaposes historical snapshots with examples of our current flawed but beautifully diverse present.
Her work has been presented in NYC at Theater for the New City, the Looking Glass Theatre, and the Circus Warehouse, as well as in Western Massachusetts by Silverthorne Theater, Hampshire Shakespeare Company, Pauline Productions, Real Live Theatre, Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble, and others. She has assistant directed three shows for The Talking Band at La Mama E.T.C.
She has taught theater at Colby College, Young Harris College, Holyoke Community College, American International College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice at Cleveland State University.
She is a graduate of Smith College (BA, cum laude, Samuel A. Eliot/Julia Heflin Award for Distinguished Directing) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (MFA), and was a 2018-2019 Directing Fellow at Asolo Repertory Theatre and a 2020-2021 Premiere Fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre. She has ongoing training at Shakespeare & Company and with the Michael Chekhov Association and Intimacy Directors International, as well as in Authentic Movement, Suzuki, and Viewpoints.
Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Theater and Dance, Cleveland State University
Governing Company Member, Real Live Theatre
