MIRANDA CORNELL (she/her/hers) is a Jewpanese New York-based theater director, educator, and sometimes writer born and bred in Brooklyn, NY. She aims to tell stories that engage the dialectic, the sincere, and the strange. 

She has directed and developed work with Roundabout, NYTW, Clubbed Thumb, Ma-Yi, Playwrights Realm, Cleveland Play House, Yale Summer Cabaret, Prospect Theater Company, the National Asian Artist Project, Mercury Store, EST/Youngblood, 24 Hour Plays, The Brick, Leviathan Lab, YES Theatre, New Ohio/Ice Factory, NYMF, Shakespeare Academy at Stratford, Moxie Arts, and universities around the country. Recent productions include CHAIRS by Hayley Stahl (Clubbed Thumb Winterworks, 2024), Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea by Julia Izumi (The New School, College of Performing Arts), and Soft Jade (軟玉) by Nina Ki (Yale Summer Cabaret).

Miranda was the 2020 Van Lier Fellow in Theater at the Asian American Arts Alliance, the inaugural Directing Apprentice at Dear Evan Hansen, the Roundabout Directors Group (Cohort 2), a NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, and most recently, a New Play Directing Fellow at Clubbed Thumb. 

She has served as associate/resident/assistant director to Danya Taymor, Chay Yew, Robert Icke, Rachel Chavkin, Michael Greif, and more. Productions include The Outsiders (Broadway/La Jolla Playhouse, 4 Tony Awards), The Doctor (Park Avenue Armory), Dear Evan Hansen (Broadway and North American tour), Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord (NYTW/LJP/Portland Center Stage, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and others at the Armory, LJP, McCarter Theatre Center, New York Stage & Film, and The TEAM. 

Outside of directing, she was seen in Pocket Universe’s all-female Julius Caesar as Casca, which was featured for its fresh take in the New York Times in July 2017.  She was also the founding Artistic Director of Semicolon Theatre Company, a company dedicated to producing the work of young theater artists and administrators professionally in New York. Alongside creative partner Zoe Kamil, she was named a ‘Woman to Watch’ by The Interval in 2016 at the age of 19.

She holds BAs in Drama and Education at Vassar College, where she was awarded the Molly Thacher Kazan Prize for her direction of Revolt. She said. Revolt again. and received top honors on her thesis in Educational Studies about socially engaged and culturally reflexive curriculum in adolescent theater classrooms. 

CURRENTLY:

  • Associate Director of The Outsiders - winner of 4 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Direction of Musical for Danya Taymor - currently running at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway

  • Developing her project about Thorton Wilder’s Our Town and the Japanese/Japanese American concentration with support from Caya Company

  • Ongoing collaborations with playwrights Jesse Jae Hoon, Eliana Theologides Rodriguez, Alexa Derman, Daria Miyeko Marinelli, and Charles Gershman.