Simon Godwin joined Shakespeare Theatre Company as Artistic Director in September 2019. His directing credits at STC include Uncle Vanya, Comedy of Errors, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Timon of Athens, and the 2024 production of Macbeth with Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, which also played in Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London. He is an Associate Director of the National Theatre of London, and has served as Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre, the Bristol Old Vic, and the Royal and Derngate Theatres in Northampton. He made his debut at the National Theatre with Strange Interlude, followed by Man and Superman, The Beaux’ Stratagem, Twelfth Night, and a celebrated production of Antony and Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo. In 2020, Simon returned to the National Theatre to direct Romeo & Juliet, an original film for television (Sky Arts in U.K./PBS in U.S.) starring Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley. He has directed at the Royal Shakespeare Company, including productions of Timon of Athens with Kathryn Hunter in the titular role, which was reimagined in early 2020 for Theatre for a New Audience in New York City and Shakespeare Theatre Company; an acclaimed Hamlet, which toured to the Kennedy Center, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In 2019, Simon directed a Japanese cast in Hamlet for Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo. In 2023, he made his opera debut at the Washington National Opera directing Roméo et Juliette by Gounod. In 2012, Simon was awarded the inaugural Evening Standard/Burberry Award for an Emerging Director. In 2023, Simon became the annual Harman/Eisner Residence Artist at the Aspen Institute. 

 Mina Morita (she/her) is a celebrated new plays director awarded the Woolly Mammoth BOLD Resident Director & Creative Producer position as part of the BOLD Theatre Women’s Leadership Circle. She has directed for: Australia’s National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatres, The Guthrie Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theatre, Center REPertory Company, Campo Santo, Shotgun Players, Playwrights Foundation, Ferocious Lotus, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and Crowded Fire Theatre Company with such creators as Susan Soon He Stanton, Qui Nguyen, Anna Deavere Smith, Sanaz Toossi, Dipika Guha, Christopher Chen, Dave Harris, Star Finch, Stefani Kuo, J.C. Lee, Lauren Gunderson, Isaac Gomez, Philip Kan Gotanda, Young Jean Lee, Idris Goodwin, Lloyd Suh, Adam Chanzit, Sean San Jose, Min Kahng, and Dustin Chinn. Mina is a recipient of the inaugural FrontOffice Mid-Career Director’s Award, Theatre Bay Area’s [TBA] Outstanding Direction of a Musical in 2014; nominated by TBA for Outstanding Direction of a Play in 2017, as well as Shellie Awards Best Director in 2018. She was recognized as a Beinecke Fellow with Yale University in 2022. Previously, she served as Artistic Director from 2015-2023 at Crowded Fire Theater Company. From 2011-2015, she was the Artistic Associate at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and its center for the creation and development of new work, The Ground Floor. She has also served as Board President and Treasurer of Shotgun Players; as a 2014 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab participant; as one of the founding members of Bay Area Children's Theatre; as panelist with the Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Theatre Bay Area, and Hewlett Foundation; as a speaker for the Getty Leadership Summit; lead facilitator for the Lotus Playwriting Retreat with Playwriting Australia; and Guest Artist at Yale’s DGSD, UC Berkeley and Stanford Universities. In 2016, TBA awarded her the 40@40 distinction for her impact on Bay Area Theater. In 2015, Mina was honored to share her story on TEDx, and in 2016, she was chosen as one of the YBCA100, for "asking questions and making provocations that will shape the future of culture." 

Jyana S. Browne (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Premodern Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland. Her areas of research include Japanese puppetry; the integration of new technology into traditional theatre; and the intersections of performance, sexuality, and embodiment on stage and in everyday life. Her scholarship has received the Nancy Staub Publication Award from The United States Center of Union Internationale de la Marionnette and the Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei Prize for Japanese Theatre Scholarship.

For nearly 40 years, the Tony Award-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company has been recognized as the nation’s premier classical theatre. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Simon Godwin and Executive Director Angela Lee Gieras, STC tells vital stories in audacious forms, stories that are Shakespearean in the deepest sense, even if they are not written by Shakespeare. We stage epic stories in exhilarating style.

The Tony Award®-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a non-profit company which creates badass theatre that highlights the stunning, challenging, and tremendous complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a high standard of artistic rigor while simultaneously daring to take risks, innovate, and push beyond perceived boundaries. One of the few remaining theatres in the country to maintain a company of artists, Woolly serves an essential research and development role within the American theatre. Plays premiered here have gone on to productions at hundreds of theatres all over the world and have had lasting impacts on the field. Currently co-led by Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas, Woolly is located in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White House. This unique location influences Woolly’s investment in actively working towards an equitable, participatory, and creative democracy.

 The Japan Information & Culture Center (JICC) is an extension of the Embassy of Japan in the United States. The JICC committed to promoting cultural exchange and understanding between Japan and the United States through public events, exhibitions, and educational programs.