Amanda Dehnert

Amanda Dehnert is an American regional theater director and professor at Northwestern University.

Career Dehnert grew up in Illinois and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in musical theater. She performed there as a musician before becoming a musical director, and later was put in charge of a production. Charles Strouse, who wrote the music for Annie, also saw the production and was impressed, which prompted him to approach Dehnert to produce his new musical, You Never Know. The play had its world premiere at Trinity Rep in April 2005.

In 2005, Dehnert became acting artistic director after Oskar Eustis moved on to become artistic director of The Public Theater in New York City.

Terry Teachout, drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, has praised several of Dehnert's productions. He called Dehnert's 2011 production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival "the best Julius Caesar I've ever seen, a stark parable of good intentions run amok that has the attention-grabbing power of a hand grenade lobbed into a crowded room." Teachout later named the production the best Shakespeare production of 2011. Teachout praised Dehnert's 2013 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of My Fair Lady, which was a minimalist reimagining of the musical in the style of Bertolt Brecht. Teachout was initially skeptical of the reimagining but wrote that Dehnert had "successfully wrought a radical transformation on the familiar parable". Teachout also lauded Dehnert's direction of Kate Hamill's adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2017 saying, "Such a show demands worthy staging, and Amanda Dehnert ... delivers the goods with gusto."