Melody Brooks

Melody Brooks Biography

MELODY BROOKS (Artistic Director) is an award-winning producer and director working in New York City since 1983. In 1991, she formed the New Perspectives Theatre Company (NPTC), and serves as the Artistic Director and CEO. Its mission and goals are a result of her long experience working in the Off- and Off-Off Broadway arenas. Brooks was a program officer with the Academy for Educational Development for eight years, previously worked at Bank Street College of Education, and was an Assistant Professor of Theatre at LIU/Brooklyn for 10 years through 2009. NPTC brings together her artistic and educational backgrounds.

Brooks received The Spirit of Hope Award from Speranza Theatre Company in 2015 for her 25-year support and development of women theatre artists. She is a co-founder of 50/50 in 2020: Parity for Women Theatre Artists, for which she shared a "Person of the Year" award in 2009. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the League of Professional Theatre Women where she serves as co-chair of the LPTW Gilder-Coigney International Theatre Award for 2017, and previously served as co-chair for the 2014 Award.. She was an advisor to the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre New Play Lab; has served as an Associate Producer for Education for the NY Musical Theatre Festival; and was an Asst. Professor of Theatre at LIU/Brooklyn from 1999-2009. She has also been a non-profit management consultant for over 25 years, including with the NYS Council on the Arts TAP initiative, and previously served on the Board of Directors of TRU (Theatre Resources Unlimited).

She oversees the artistic output of NPTC, and creates and supervises new projects that address its mission. Brooks directs the Women’s Work Project, overseeing the development of short and full-length plays by 12-16 members per year; Women's Work also produces ON HER SHOULDERS, staged readings of plays by women from the past centuries through the 1960s. Brooks is the Executive Producer for NPTC’s Voices From the Edge Festival, which has showcased and supported the work of more than 75 African-American writers and performers since its creation in 1998.

Brooks has developed and directed dozens of original scripts with NPTC, notably EXHIBIT #9 by Tracey Scott Wilson, a satire on the African American Experience (AUDELCO Award);; JIHAD, THE PLAY by Ann Chamberlin, a mystical examination of the influence of gender and religion in war (OOBR Award); ANATOMY OF A LOVE AFFAIR r by Deirdre Hollman, an intense look at an interracial relationship ending after eight years (optioned by Essence Entertainment); EVERYDAY SOMEWHERE HERE: LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND ISRAEL, a multi-media piece created in collaboration with Benji Rogers and based on his travels to the region; MOTHER OF GOD! by Michele Miller, which reexamines the birth of Christ from an historical (and satirical) perspective (Princess Grace Award Finalist.) Other developmental directing credits include FINDING HOME by Keline Adams, starring Marcella Lowery (of Cosby Show fame), UNTITLED AND UNFINISHED, written and performed by Yolanda Wilkinson and presented at NPTC and the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival; and TOUCHSCAPE, written and performed by James Scruggs for the Queer at HERE Festival.

Brooks has also directed many of NPTC's innovative classic productions. With Vebeke Lunn of Primary Sauces in London, she created a unique production of MACBETH that included an authentic medieval banquet as a central part of the action. She has also directed the NPTC productions of HAMLET, influenced by Linda Kaye Hoff's Hamlet's Choice, which posits that the play parallels the Book of Revelation; ROMEO 7 JULIET uncut and using the performance techniques of the First Folio; a modern dress JULIUS CAESAR with a nod to Murder, Inc.; OTHELLO (cited by Austin Pendleton as the "best production of the play he had ever seen", THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, MISS JULIE, and the NY Premiere of Vaclev Havel's The INCREASED DIFFICULTY OF CONCENTRATION. In addition, she served as co-director and dramaturg on NPTC's OOBR award-winning production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

With key partners she has supervised the creation and implementation of all NPTC arts-in-education workshops and drama residencies. With Resident Production Designer Meganne George, she created an integrated Theatre Arts curriculum for School for Classics, a public school in East NY (Brooklyn) which NPTC helped to create in 2009. Over four years, a team of teaching artists mentored a growing staff of Theatre teachers and directed/produced an annual student Shakespeare production. In 2014 she designed an after-school component for PS-IS 137 that would use the words of Shakespeare to motivate an investment by 8th graders in their ELA classes. She has created dozens of workshops and training programs for schools, students, emerging and professional artists over the 26-year history of NPTC.

Brooks began acting in an Upstate New York theatre company when she was a child, touring playgrounds, schools and the NYS Fair throughout the summers, and performing in the company's permanent space during the remainder of the year. This early training and exposure to all aspects of theatre production played an important role in her development as a theatre professional and as a person, and forms the basis of her commitment to extending the benefits of theatre as a positive influence to young people and communities in need. Her acting credits are varied and diverse. She has performed extensively with NPTC's Shakespeare Made Simple program, appeared opposite Austin Pendleton in the company's production of RICHARD III in the role of Queen Elizabeth, and played Lady Macbeth among other roles with NPTC. In 1991, she performed in a production of OEDIPUS, REXat Epidaurus, Greece, which marked the first ever appearance of American actors in the history of the 2,400-year-old theatre. She also appeared at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival in TEMPORARY LUCIDITY, a critically acclaimed series of one-acts by playwright Rick Balian, which she co-produced.