Everything is propelled by the singular directorial vision of Eddie DeHais, who excels at creating striking tableaux and evoking remarkably tactile worlds.
— SEATTLE TIMES

Eddie DeHais (they/them) is an award-winning Franco-American director, writer, designer, and choreographer. Eddie is a worlds-creator and world-traveler making wildly visceral experiences in theater, opera, and interdisciplinary events. Their 18-year background creating rigorous devised physical theater collides with their expertise with traditional dramaturgy, treating every process with infectious curiosity that inspires artists and audiences alike.

Eddie's expertise is developing new shows with an ensemble or playwright, and reimagining classics. Their shows are marked by their transformative nature, imaginative playfulness, fierce compassion, and strong sensorial visual aesthetic, appealing to audiences hungry for an authentically alive experience.

Eddie is a transgender director with a keen ability to bring people together, and a powerful sense of how storytelling allows people to see and hear each other across difference. Creating inclusive, diverse, and equitable theater is embedded into their process and reflected in their product.

They are a TEDx speaker and received their MFA in Directing from Brown-Trinity Rep.

In 22-23, Eddie has projects in Paris, NYC, DC, Boston, Geneva, San Diego, and Seattle among others. They currently reside in the NYC area.

Representation:
GURMAN AGENCY LLC

Susan Gurman, Agent
susan@gurmangency.com
212-749-4618

Eddie working as the Choreographic & Intimacy Consultant on Salome at the Opera de Paris, Bastille. Director Lydia Steier, John Dazsak as Herodes

Current Projects


Recent Work

Death & the Maiden
by Ariel Dorfman

Featuring an original score crafted by Tatar composer Adeliia Faizullini sung by Cuban singer/activist Aliana De La Guardia. Designs by Zoë Hurwitz, SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobal, Amanda Downing Carney, and Daniel Baker of Broken Chord.

Laughter and lethality intertwine in this dynamic reimagining of a modern classic. After being kidnapped and tortured under a repressive regime, Paulina encounters a man she believes to be the one behind her suffering. But during her quest for justice, the lines between Paulina’s reality and fantasy quickly begin to blur. With a biting sense of humor and thrilling original music, Death and the Maiden asks how to heal our greatest wounds when world events tear us apart, and explores the dangers in believing the lies we tell ourselves to cope.

Eddie is the kind of director who asks you to walk off a cliff in the name of making good theater, which seems like a bad idea until you realize that it’s an invitation to fly.
— KAI CURTIS, PERFORMER

SALOME at the Opera de Paris
director: Lydia Steier
(Choreographic & Intimacy Consultant)

Le Monde: “The opera composed by Richard Strauss spreads like wildfire, zigzagging in sensuality before exploding in eroticism. At the Opéra Bastille, we immediately get to the heart of the matter. At least, in the upper part of the plateau which, behind a long bay window, hosts a party that looks like an orgy. Blowjobs, sodomy, masturbation... there's something for everyone.”

Age of Bees
by Tira Palmquist

Portland Phoenix Review: “Under DeHais’s direction, song and sound are heightened among the actors as well as in the sound design. Mel announces herself by slamming a book or kicking a trash can. Jonathan enters the orchard with a cacophony of beeps, the jangling of the chain link, and a heavy, limping stomp of his one good foot. And when the women sing hymns and gospel, in transporting harmony, the beauty of the songs is deepened by how clearly precious they are to those who sing them.”


Selected works

Human connection is of supreme importance in this new world, and under the direction of DeHais, the characters’ interactions are alive with collaborative physicality. Characters often form striking tableaux of care-taking and bodily vulnerability
— Portland Phoenix
Silhouette

Silhouette

Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine

Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine

BIG BAD

BIG BAD

Into the Deeps

Into the Deeps

Sundown at the Devil’s House

Sundown at the Devil’s House

Mad Scientisti Cabaret

Mad Scientisti Cabaret

Digital Projects
created Remotely during the Pandemic

 
This kind of theater - immediate, entirely in & of its necessary medium - should be more common. But this quality of show will always be rare; this much time, attention, and heart isn’t easily or frequently poured into a piece to this effect. The performers put all the humor, precision, pathos, and vulnerability on stage that they can muster, directed with characteristically vivid urgency and atomic-clock-timing by Eddie DeHais.
— LYAM WHITE, WRITER & PERFORMER, UMO ENSEMBLE
 

Photo by Joe Iano.

Photo by Craig Amromin

Production Still: BIG BAD. Marcus Gorman, Alyza DelPan-Monley, Jordan Moeller, and Jessica Stepka. Photo by Joe Iano.