Shaping Stories. Creating Impact.

Tea Alagić Studio

EDUCATION & ARTIST DEVELOPMENT

Advanced Directing Class – Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Contemporary Theatre and Performance (MFA)
School of Drama, College of Performing Arts, The New School

Tea Alagić Studio operates a dedicated educational initiative focused on sustained, high-level professional development for working artists.

Through masterclasses, workshops, and mentorship, the program supports actors, directors, writers, and interdisciplinary artists navigating the space between formal training and long-term professional practice.

The focus is on:

  • rigorous engagement with text and performance
  • cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exchange
  • mentorship across generations
  • developing artistic responsibility and independence

Particular attention is given to artists whose work and perspectives have been shaped by displacement, migration, and political conflict.

Education is not auxiliary—it is foundational to the company’s mission.

Tea currently serves as a Professor in Directing at The New School in the College of Performing Arts, School of Drama, where she teaches at both the MFA and BFA levels. She has been a faculty member at The New School since 2012, teaching approximately six courses each year and advising MFA directing theses.

From 2016 to 2020, she served as Department Chair and Head of Directing. During her tenure, she established partnerships between The New School and NYU, as well as with the Schaubühne Theater in Berlin, and brought prominent guest artists and theater companies into the school to work directly with students.

Over the years, Tea has brought a wide range of established artists and theater practitioners into the classroom and rehearsal room, including playwrights Daniel Alexander Jones and Lauren Yee; artists from The Wooster Group, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Elevator Repair Service, and Tectonic Theater Project; director Arin Arbus; producer Anne Hamburger; artistic director Lisa McNulty; designer Maiko Chii; writer and performer Geoff Sobelle; and many others.

At The New School, Tea has also taught collaboration-based seminars in close partnership with the Playwriting Department, including work with Lucy Thurber, Co-Chair of the MFA Playwriting Program, and the New Voices initiative. Her teaching in this area focuses on director–playwright collaboration and the integration of actors into the creative process.

She has regularly collaborated across departments with faculty including Todd London, as well as with members of the Playwriting and Acting programs, including Peter Jay and Scott Whitehurst.

Tea’s teaching emphasizes the practical skills of directing and acting, including dramaturgy, text analysis, scene breakdowns, composition, devising, and the practical realities of producing and theater management.

Her courses at The New School have included Project 1, a producing course focused on budgets, unions, and theater management; Collaborative Making Process 2, a devising course for actors; a composition-focused directing practicum; and Advanced Directing, which combines text analysis, directing practice, and a final public presentation.

Education projects
Composition

This course is a practical, analytical, and theoretical collaboration lab examining the elements of composition in the performing arts. Students engage in reading, writing, and research assignments while developing original work in three groups, exploring different elements of composition through practice.

Each group develops an original piece to be presented as a live performance, followed by a public presentation and critical feedback. Audiences include students and faculty from The New School for Drama, as well as members of the wider community.

Students are also responsible for inviting audiences and promoting their presentations, giving them practical experience in developing, presenting, and communicating their work.

Students develop short performance pieces drawn from a variety of theatrical and non-theatrical sources, exploring the possibilities and full range of performance while building skills as creators, developers, and performers.

CMP2 (Collaborative Making Process 2) continues students’ exploration of the collaborative dynamics between actors, writers, and directors in the creation, rehearsal, and production of new work.

Throughout the semester, writers develop drafts of new plays that actors and directors then work on through an extended process of rehearsal and development. Writers and directors are matched with individual projects, allowing the collaborators to develop the pieces together from the rehearsal room through presentation.

By the end of the course, students develop a deeper, experiential understanding of the creative process and are prepared to bring their skills to more challenging and ambitious work. The completed pieces are presented publicly at the end of the semester.

This course serves as the central hub for third-year MFA directors, focusing on the creative and practical preparation required to direct full-length projects. Through close, mentorship-based work, students develop and refine their individual creative processes and artistic voices while their ideas are challenged and expanded through sustained investigation.

The course also incorporates paper projects connected to investigations into directors and dramatists, alongside pre-production work based on Sophocles’ Antigone. Students engage in detailed text analysis, casting, design development, and planning for costumes, set, lighting, sound, and projection. They also develop directors’ pitches, budgets, production plans, and participate in production meetings and scene work.

Education projects

TEACHING CREDITS and EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTIONS

2012-present: Professor of Directing, Acting, Playwriting, Collaboration, Design, Production, The New School for Drama, MFA, BFA Program
2025: Professor of Directing I at Barnard College, BA
2023: Professor of Directing at Pace University, BFA
2022: Professor of Directing at Sarah Lawrence College, MFA
2016-2020: Head of Directing Department, BFA and MFA, The New School University
2019: Yale School of Drama, MFA playwriting, Fordham University, BFA in directing
2016: Youth Artists Leadership Summer Program, University of Miami
2012: Directing and collaboration, The PIMA M.F.A. at Brooklyn College
2008-2009: Faculty Adjunct: Acting, Movement, Acting Career Development, Lee Strasberg Institute, NYC
2008: Mentor at the University of Texas, Austin
2007: Assistant Instructor in Acting, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University Summer Program, New Haven

Education projects