photo Credit: Lou Havlicek

Mikhaela Mahony is a Brooklyn-based director of theatre, opera, and film.

Mikhaela directs new plays, classics, and operatic work that wakes us up to the potential inside the human body — potential for power, for sound, for pain, for forgiveness, for joy.

As both an opera and theatre director, she has developed work with the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Youngblood, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Bushwick Starr, Primary Stages, Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, Boston Lyric Opera, zoe | juniper, Detroit Opera, The Juilliard School, New York City Opera, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Columbia Stages, The Syndicate, F*it Club, City Lyric Opera, the Collaborative Arts Ensemble, The Lobbyists, Mannes Opera at The New School, Bard College, Wolf359, the Chautauqua Institution, the Manhattan School of Music, among others.

Mikhaela frequently collaborates as an associate with directors Anne Bogart, Daniel Fish, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Louisa Proske, Mary Birnbaum, John Giampietro, and RJ Tolan.

Her debut as a film director, Summer, was an official selection at the Buffalo International Film Festival, Flathead Lake International Cinemafest, and FilmColumbia in Chatham, NY.

Most recently, Mikhaela co-founded Double Feature along with director Katherine Wilkinson, a company staging reimagined classics in intimate venues across New York City.

Mikhaela is currently a member of the faculty of Mannes School of Music at The New School and recently served as the Director of Rutgers Opera Theatre at The Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She is a proud member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the WP Lab 2024-2026, and a longtime volunteer artist with the 52nd Street Project.