Select Credits Include: The Pearl Fishers (Dallas Opera, Santa Fe Opera), Tosca (San Francisco Opera), Falstaff (Dallas Opera), Lucia di Lammermoor (Lyric Opera Kansas City), Die Fledermaus (Opera Theater St. Louis).

 Shawna Lucey

Shawna Lucey is an acclaimed American theater and opera director, whose work has been seen at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and other major houses around the world. Her legacy production of Tosca launched San Francisco Opera’s 99th season in 2021. It was followed in 2022 by her centennial celebration, ground-breaking legacy production of La traviata, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a beautiful new Traviata meant to last for decades. Magnificent.” Shawna made her directorial debut with Opera San José (OSJ) in 2018 with La traviata, brilliantly staged with skill and imagination, offering a compelling contemporary viewpoint. In 2023, she will launch OSJ’s season with a new production of Gounod’s Romeo & Juliet.

Her directorial work has been seen across the US, including Dallas Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Santa Fe Opera, and many others. Shawna also boasts an international reputation, staging works at Gran Teatre del Liceu (Spain), Bolshoi Theater (Russia), and Schauspiel Hannover (Germany), among many others. She has assisted several esteemed directors, including Stephen Lawless, Lee Blakeley, John Caird, Peter Schumann, and Francesca Zambello. 

In addition to opera, Lucey steps outside the canon into theatre and musicals, staging works such as Gilbert & Sullivan’s rollicking The Pirates of Penzance, which BroadwayWorld lauded for its “contemporary flair, dousing the classic with a touch of modern Monty Python alongside  Carol Burnett  Show moments. A true contemporary comic delight faithful to the original Gilbert and Sullivan intent.” 

Shawna holds BAs in Theater and Italian from the University of Texas at Austin, and received her MFA in Directing & Movement from the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute of the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow. She will receive her Master of Science in Non-Profit Management from Columbia University in 2023. She has also served as an adjunct professor in Speech and Theater at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, encouraging the next generation of artists while teaching courses on acting, design, stage management, and directing. She serves on the Board of Directors of Team San José, as well as the Board of the Theatre Preservation Fund in San José. Her second passion, nail art, can be viewed on her Instagram page.