Melissa Crespo (she/her) is a director, writer, and arts leader. A proud Latina originally from Connecticut, Melissa splits her time between her home in NYC and Syracuse Stage where she serves as the Associate Artistic Director.
Melissa is a Lilly award-winning director of new plays. She has developed and staged new work at MCC Theatre, INTAR, Playwright's Realm, Atlantic Theatre Company, WP Theatre, and more. Directing is way more fun with writers in the room.
As a playwright, Melissa co-wrote Egress with Sarah Saltwick. Egress was produced as a workshop production at Cleveland Playhouse in 2019 and received the Roe Green Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting. Egress received a world premiere production in 2021 at Amphibian Stage, followed by another production at Salt Lake Acting Company in 2022.
Melissa has been on faculty at The New School for Drama and the Syracuse University Department of Drama. She has served as a Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, and Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre, and is an alum of the Drama League Director's Project. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and received her MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama.
The late and incomparable Maria Irene Fornés once said, “We can only do what is possible...but still, it is good to know what the impossible is.” Making theatre has always been my form of challenging everything, especially the impossible. My favorite way to push boundaries is with comedy--the sillier the better.
When the world gets too unkind and the question of why theatre starts to creep in, I like to re-read a speech Sarah Ruhl once gave in late 2016:
“'What do we do?'We sing full-throatedly, and we support the free speech of our friends. We reject the art of cruelty. When it seems that the country has had a referendum on values like culture, kindness, and common decency—and said we choose none of these…what can the artistic community do but insist on modeling culture, kindness and common decency. We demonstrate with our theatrical practice that, in artistic and other democracies, we are completely dependent on one another.
So, to my students who are writing to me, saying: 'What to do?' I say: Find each other. Don’t sit in your own room. Find the common room, which is called grace, which is called a theater. This room is also our country, and we all belong here. To be in a room where poetry matters, to be in a room where not everything can be monetized, to be in a room where culture and valor might have something to do with one another…Dig in your heels and stay."
But don't get me wrong, while theatre will always be my first love, ya girl can also do film and TV. You see all of those awards on that poster to the left? Call me.
fun facts
I'm a quintessential Virgo, obsessed with all things camp. a wanna-be dog mom, and plant lover.
my Latina is a fun mix of Chilean, Dominican, and Puerto Rican.
