Liesl Tommy

Liesl Tommy is a South African-American director. Primarily known for her stage work, Tommy became the first woman of color to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, for directing the Broadway production of Danai Gurira's Eclipsed. She also guest directed The Walking Dead episode "Chokepoint". She made her feature film directorial debut with the biopic Respect, based on the life of singer Aretha Franklin, starring Jennifer Hudson and released in August 2021.

Early life Tommy was born in Cape Town, South Africa during apartheid and experienced racial segregation as a non-white citizen. The family lived in the Factreton township. Her father was a high-school teacher and politically active against the apartheid regime.

After graduation, Tommy studied acting with Clare Davidson in London. a program working with at-risk families in the Roxbury area of Boston.

She is known for "re-envisioning" classic plays by creating retellings drawn from her own personal experiences and stories in life. Tommy's aesthetic is physical and visceral and she is interested in portraying the violence of being a human on stage through physical violence and/or violent exchanges.

Tommy's training as an actor has influenced her directorial style, particularly the way that she runs her rehearsals. She finds textual analysis and table work important during the rehearsal process and refrains from putting the play on its feet until she knows the actors have a sense of their characters. She also tries to give the actors the chance to drive the piece so that the audience has a chance to see people being free onstage.

Tommy has made it a mission of hers to advocate for a more diverse theatre experience in her shows. Her 2012 production of Hamlet at California Shakespeare Theatre featured numerous African-American actors, including the title roles of Hamlet and Ophelia. She has directed plays by celebrated playwrights such as August Wilson's The Piano Lesson at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2011 and Ruined by Lynn Nottage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2011.

One of her remake of a classical production was a version of Les Misérables at Dallas Theater Center she directed in 2014. This production included a racially diverse cast that challenged typical casting types and explored themes of African political demonstrations and "social justice". She had never seen a production of Les Misérables before she directed it, but she did read the book when she was a young girl and had a mission to tell a story of student uprisings. Her resume encompasses a wide variety of plays that put this philosophy into action. One of her latest productions, Eclipsed, written by Danai Gurira tells the story of five Liberian women trying to survive toward the end of the Second Liberian War. This production starred Lupita Nyong'o and became the first-ever all-female-cast play written and directed by a female to premiere on Broadway. Before its move to New York, Tommy faced criticism that Eclipsed was too similar to Ruined by Lynn Nottage. When Ms. Nottage saw the play she agreed that there were similarities, but argued that as a whole it was a completely different story about different women and completely different circumstances. Tommy received a Tony Award nomination for directing for Eclipsed, making her the first African-American female director to have received a best directing nomination for a play at the Tony Awards.

Her directing credits include a theatrical version of the animated Disney film Frozen at the Hyperion at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. She directed Kid Victory, a new musical produced Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in 2017. Tommy was named early on to directing the world premiere of Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, however, at its premiere Danya Taymor was listed as director.

In March 2018, Tommy was hired to direct Born a Crime, the film adaption of the autobiography of the same name by Trevor Noah. Liesl directed the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect with Jennifer Hudson portraying Franklin.

Awards and nominations 2014: Obie Award, Direction for Appropriate, Winner 2016: Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director for Eclipsed, Winner 2016: Tony Award, Best Direction of a Play for Eclipsed, nominee