Rehearsal for Spanish Tragedy Photo by Woods Pierce

Asae Dean is a freelance director from Albuquerque, New Mexico, based in Portland, Oregon. She attended the graduate program in Shakespeare and Performance at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. There she earned a Masters of Fine Arts for her directorial thesis project, Cressida, a four person, ninety-minute, adaptation of William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. While at Mary Baldwin she served as assistant to the director for Tina Packer on Pericles, stage managed for Rob Clare on Taming of the Shrew, and studied directing under Giles Block. Recent directing credits include Brilliant Traces, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra. She is particularly proud to have directed Hamlet (twice), The Maid's Tragedy, The Spanish Tragedy, Fool for Love, and Electricidad: A Chicano Take on the Tragedy of Electra. She has interned as the dramaturg for Tamburlaine and as the assistant to the director for 2 Henry IV at The American Shakespeare Center. She served as the FAIR assistant director on Ghost Light at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a voracious consumer of poetry and lover of dance. Her blog is "A Directress." She is the co-founder of Salt and Sage Productions.