Alexis Kulani Woodard (she/her) is a Director and Adaptor, proud Spelman College Alumna, former Spelman Leadership Fellow at the Alliance Theatre and current MFA Directing Candidate at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She is a 2024 Princess Grace Award Winner in Theatre.

Alexis believes in theatremaking as an incubator to create the (seemingly) impossible — personal freedom, social liberation, and true community. She believes in theatre as a space to escape into — a playground to dream and conjure other worlds. Alexis believes in the artists’ responsibility to heal and transcend the divisions we were born into, create community and thereby destroy isolation.

She uses the transformative power of theatre to create empathy and challenge the social boundaries we place around others and ourselves. As an investigator of New Work and a partner to playwrights, Alexis uses her deep curiosity and process driven ethos to invite audiences into the rich complexity and diversity of our contemporary times.

She served as the Co-Artistic Director of The Alliance Theatre’s inaugural 2020-2021 Digital Season, where she programmed Laugh Track, BackStage Atlanta, Spotlight Studio, and From the Ashes.

Select Directing Credits include: Measure for Measure (School of Drama at Yale) Four Meddling Kids and One Dumb Dog, Every Brilliant Thing (Yale Cabaret), Hamlet (The Tiny Theater Company, Alliance Theatre: Guest Artist Series) Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments, Do You Love The Dark?  (Alliance Theatre),  From the Ashes (Alliance Theatre Anywhere).

Associate Directing Credits include: A Christmas Carol: The Live Radio Play, Working (Alliance Theatre) and the world premiere tri-production of Dream Hou$e (Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theater, Baltimore Center Stage). Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments won a Suzi Bass award in 2022 for outstanding Social Justice production.

She has also assistant directed for the Suzi Award winning world premiere play, Hands of Color (Synchronicity Theater), A Christmas Carol (The Repertory Theater of St. Louis), Escaped Alone (Yale Repertory Theatre) and A Kids Play About Racism (Bay Area Children’s Theater).