Biography
Tea is an internationally acclaimed theater artist with working experience in Croatian, Czech, and English. She holds a BFA in acting from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, and an MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama where she received Julian Milton Kaufman Prize in Directing.
New York Times has called Tea a “director with great zeal“.
Her Off-Broadway directing work includes Aliens With Extraordinary Skills by Saviana Stanescu (Woman’s Project, NYC), The Brothers Size by Tarell McCraney (Under the Radar Festival, and the world premiere with seventy-three shows at The Public theater in NYC, The Studio Theater in Washington DC, and The Abbey Theater in Dublin), and Binibon, by Jack Womack with music by Elliot Sharp (The Kitchen, NYC).
Tea’s regional credits include Zero Hour, where Tea wrote and directed a personal exploration of the impact of the Balkan war, (Yale University Theater, CT), Speaking Our Mind by eight young playwrights, (part of the Carlotta Festival at Yale’s New Theater, CT), The Donny Hathaway Story by Kenneth Robinson (Yale Cabaret, CT), Marcus Brutus by Tea Alagic, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Chiang Kai Chek by Charles Mee (Yale Cabaret, CT).
She directed Woyzek by George Buchner, Self–Accusation by Peter Handke, Preparadise Sorry Now by Rainer Werner Fassbiner, and Baal by Bertold Brecht while she was Associate Artistic Director of the Ensemble Company for the Performing Arts (ECPA.)
Her directing work at New York City universities includes: Laughing Pictures: A Hollywood Odyssey by Matthew Maguire and Daniel Levy (Fordham University, NYC), St. Joan by Bernard Shaw, (Main Stage, NYU), and The Babbel Project (written as well as directed; NYU, Experimental Theatre Workshop).
International directing work includes The Marriage of Maria Braun by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, (ZKM, Croatia), Events with Life’s Leftovers by Alberto Villarreal Diaz (Mexico City, Dramafest), and The Filament Cycle written and directed, (BAC London, Potsdam Festival, 4+4 Festival in Movement, Prague, Philadelphia Fringe Festival).
As an actor, Tea has worked with Ariane Mnouchkine at Theatre du Soleil in Paris, with Robert Lepage as a member of his Ex Machina company in Quebec City, including a four year world tour, and with Richard Foreman at the Ontological Theater in NYC. She has performed in the most renowned theaters around the globe including New York (BAM), Paris, London (Royal National Theater), Zurich, Vienna, Cairo, Edinburgh, Toronto, Jerusalem, Singapore, Italy, Lisbon, and many others. Tea has been honored with a Soros Fellowship, a 2004 CEC Arts Link Performing Arts and Literature Award, and awards for best show and play Al Hamlet Summit by Sulayman Al Bassam at both the Cairo International Festival and the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival.
Tea, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives in NYC.
