dado is an ensemble member at A Red Orchid Theatre. Her production of Eugene Ionesco’s Killing Game, about a deadly mysterious virus, was produced precisely one year before the Covid-19 outbreak, and included material by the playwright that had never been seen before in the U.S. This groundbreaking production fused new and contemporary music with absurdist text. Her AROT production of Sam Shepard’s Simpatico transferred to the McCarter Theatre to much critical acclaim. She starred as Karla Stock in the world premiere of AROT’s production of TRAITOR by Brett Neveu, directed by Michael Shannon. This adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People won three Joseph Jefferson Awards.
Past AROT productions directed by dado include In Quietness; The Malignant Ampersands (world premiere); The Room (Harold Pinter); The Mutilated (Tennessee Williams); Red Handed Otter (Ethan Lipton); Megacosm (Brett Neveu); The Unseen (Craig Wright); The Hothouse (Pinter); The Sea Horse (Edward Moore); The Fastest Clock in the Universe (Philip Ridley); and The Grey Zone (Tim Blake Nelson). She also directed Incubator Series productions of A Night Out (Pinter), Celebration (Pinter), and Act Five (Katherine Swan and Anton Chekhov). She assistant directed AROT’s remounted production of Victims of Duty and has appeared onstage at AROT in The Moors, Grey House, The Receptionist (Incubator), and Strandline.
At Facility Theatre, where she is a resident director, dado was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best Director for her work on Catherine Anne Toupin’s Right Now. The production also won a Jeff Award for Ensemble. For Facility Theatre, she has directed Erik Satie’s surreal play Ruse of Medusa and Jen Silverman’s Phoebe in Winter. She also staged an installation of Alice Birch’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at SoNa Art Gallery with The Feast Theatre Collective.
dado holds an MFA in visual art from the University of Chicago and received the Edes Prize. She used this unrestricted award to produce David Lang’s chamber opera little matchgirl passion at Facility Theatre in a vacant middle school cafeteria. The production, which sold out immediately, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber opera derived from the Hans Christian Andersen short story. The project combined music, percussion, sculpture, movement, and whole animal butchery.
She has created and installed the original Vacuum Cleaner Opera (Museum of Contemporary Art & Prop Thtr), Alice In Bed by Susan Sontag (Trap Door Theatre), and productions at Shattered Globe, Emerald City, Steppenwolf, Prop, Famous Door, and many others. She received an After Dark Award for Outstanding Direction for the critically acclaimed U.S. premiere of Huddersfield by Ugliesa Sajtinac, produced by TUTA at Victory Gardens. She also received a Jeff Award for Best Director for Tracers at Mary Arrchie Theatre and was the recipient of The Goodman Theatre’s Michael Maggio Directing Fellowship, where she assistant directed A Life in the Theater with Robert Falls.
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