Zoe Senese-Grossberg (she/her/hers) is a New York based director, playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist. Zoe is a highly collaborative director who often works with text rich plays, adaptations, and plays with music. Her work shifts from highly stylized movement based works to quiet actor driven dramas. Her plays have been nationally ranked with her play Lay The Bent To The Bonny Broom being a 2023 semi-finalist for the National Playwright’s Conference.
Directing credits include Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando, an original adaptation of Hamlet, Caridad Svich’s 12 Ophelias, Karel Cavek’s R.U.R., The Seagull, and the world premiere for BOY MY GREATNESS.
The literary director for The Firebird Project, she has directed, assistant directed, dramaturged, and adapted over seven productions with them from 2017 onwards. She has also assistant directed for Paul Moser, Matthew Wright, and Emily Mendelssohn. Zoe began her training as a 2017 Powerhouse Training Company Directing Apprentice where she had an observership with Scott Ellis for the workshop of Amy and the Orphans. She also was the assistant producer on the world premiere of Winter Miller’s No One Is Forgotten at Rattlestick Playwright Theater. She worked under Thomas Cote as an assistant at the Workshop Theater from 2016-2017 and under Heather Harvey on the world premiere of Bars at Four Walls Theater.
As a playwright her training began at Arts Connection’s TRAC program under Winter Miller. She later studied under Jeffrey Joseph with Manhattan Theater Club’s WriteNow program and Noelle Ghoussaini with TDF’s WordLab. In college, she studied playwriting under Kari Barclay and Caroline Jackson-Smith. Her work has received awards from The Eugene O’Neill Center, YoungArts, and Penguin Random House. As a playwright, her work spans genre. She began with more naturalist and grounded works, often dealing with historical themes, but has expanded into more experimental and meta theatrical works.
With her background as a classically trained musician, having studied voice at Fiorello H. Laguardia High School for Music & Art and the Performing Arts, and her passion for folk music, most of her work as both a writer and a director incorporates elements of music and song.
She has worked as a teaching artist at Firebird Youth Theater, New Voices Middle School through NIA Community Services, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She has taught playwriting classes in an independent capacity as well as worked as a freelance playwriting tutor and monologue coach. Zoe has a great passion for engaging young people with the world of theater and hopes she can give them the gifts so many wonderful teachers gave to her throughout her education.
Zoe graduated Oberlin College with a B.A. in Theater and English with High Honors. She also received the Nash Drama Award upon graduation.
Zoe is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.
Upcoming:
Zoe’s play if i live until i be a man (devised with actors Rae Bell and Sophie Falvey) will be performed at the Space UK as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, 2024.
Zoe is developing a solo show about the life of Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, the controversial lover of Oscar Wilde, incorporating elements of cabaret and drag performance. This highly intensive research project will be performed by her frequent collaborator, NY based actor, Sophie Falvey.