Elkhanah Pulitzer is an acclaimed American stage director whose visually arresting productions bring intellectual rigor, emotional immediacy, and a distinctly contemporary theatrical imagination to opera and live performance. She creates from the inside out, allowing the essential DNA of each work to determine the visual and dramatic language that brings it to life. She is particularly drawn to the ways class, status, and power shape identity and human behavior, often foregrounding dynamic women. Her practice encompasses newly composed operas, canonical repertoire, Baroque oratorios, collaborations with orchestras, bespoke theatrical creations for concert artists, artistic consultancy, and curatorial leadership. Her productions have been featured at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, West Edge Opera, The Prototype Festival, and Washington National Opera.
Pulitzer graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a degree in Theatre Arts and holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University, where she studied with groundbreaking American director Anne Bogart. Emerging from a family tradition of art curation stretching back to the 1880s, Pulitzer also serves as vice president of the board of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, an institution dedicated to experimentation in art curation, installation, and live programming.