Joann Maria Yarrow is a professional director and producer with over 35 years of experience. Currently, she is the Director of Community Engagement at Syracuse Stage in New York, as well as the Executive Director of Distinctive Voices, a company that provides narrative consulting for professional theatrical content, commercial voice-over, directing and interpreting services. She is the CEO of Live Animation Studios producing content for film and television in both English and Spanish. 

 

Joann began her career as a director and choreographer while with Double Edge Theatre in Boston. She trained with Odin Teatret in Denmark, co-founding A Laboratory for Actor Training with Vernice Miller in New York City. She was also a part of Richard Schechner’s company, East Coast Artists in several productions at LaMama ETC. Joann spent three years working for Broadway director, Harold Prince on the productions of Parade, Whistle down the Wind, Candide, Show Boat, Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Phantom of the Opera.  She has since worked in Denmark, London, Madrid, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.

 

For 12 years, Joann was the Artistic Director of Teatro Prometeo, the only Spanish-language theatre conservatory and repertory in the nation. While there, she directed and produced over 80 productions, translated, adapted and commissioned new works that have toured nationally and internationally.  She produced and hosted annual international theatre festivals such as the International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami and Play Time: An International Theatre Festival for Children as well as creating programming for the Miami Book Fair International for 10 seasons. With Lau Lapides Studios, Joann created the Miami Hispanic Showcase, a networking event that brings bilingual talent together with agents and casting directors. She is a recurring guest with the Studio working alongside agents and casting directors in New York and Los Angeles as well as teaching professional acting and voice-over classes.

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Joann has partnered with VFX Director, Dean Lyon of Splinter Studios, Lamar Hawkins of MyGosh Switzerland, Leslie Calvo of Tres Monstrous in Spain, Jim Hammond of Puppet Network LLC, and Amy Carlson of Ecke Studios, LLC, to bring to life various live action and animation projects, from live events to television series as well as voice-over for animation and motion capture performance. She directed the pilot “Let’s Go!” and is currently on the writing team and director for the “Fearless Times” animated series. Joann teamed up with Miami Dade College for the launch of MAGIC (Miami Animation and Gaming International Complex) where she taught fight choreography and physical characterization for gamers in their motion-capture studio, voice-over classes at their sound studios and was a judge for MAGIC pitch week, working with animation teams to pitch to Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and other partners. She is currently a virtual teaching mentor for the ADA Labs Animation Boot Camp in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Joann Yarrow received her B.F.A. from Boston University and her M.F.A. in Directing from the University of California at Irvine. She has taught at the Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid, the NYU Madrid Program and Union College in New York. Joann was a member of the Latinx Theater Commons and is an alumnus of the Director’s Lab West in Los Angeles where she has participated for the last 20 years. 

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Joann is a featured director in the book “The art and practice of directing in Latin America: Central America and United States.” Her adaptation and translation of Oliver Mayer’s play, Blade to the Heat (Filo al fuego) is published in the Tramoya Anthology, 2014. She most recently contributed to several new books, such as Latinx Actor Training, published by Rutledge in 2023, Inside the Performance Workshop: A sourcebook for Rasaboxes; and A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S.; (Routledge 2023).

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At Syracuse Stage, Joann curates community dialogues, inviting the public to discuss and address topics that surface from Syracuse Stage’s productions or local projects.  She also directs the touring productions of Citizen James or a Young Man Without a Country, by Kyle Bass; on the young James Baldwin, Commanding Space by Stephanie Leary about Annie Easley - one of the first black women to work for NASA, and Our Words Are Seeds by Ty Defoe, created in collaboration with community members of the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She is passionate about fostering multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary programs and productions that challenge and shift our thoughts, actions, and perspectives.