YAGIL ELIRAZ Director
About Me
Yagil Eliraz is a director, educator, and founder with a rich and diverse career spanning over two decades. His work ranges from classical plays like The Oresteia, Oedipus, and Coriolanus, to contemporary new works exploring urgent social themes.
Yagil’s productions embrace a wide spectrum of styles, from movement-based and imagistic theater to hyper-realistic drama and opera. In Israel, he has directed for leading repertory companies, fringe theaters, and acting studios. In the U.S., his directing career began with an invitation to Chicago to remount his monodrama about the young Adolf Hitler.
Yagil has served as artistic director and producer of two prominent festivals in Israel: the SmallBama Festival at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Festival’s Arena.
As a professor, he taught for five years at Amherst College, where he designed and led courses in acting, devising, and theater history while directing mainstage productions. He has also taught at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and founded the theater-directing program at Tel Aviv’s Tzavta Theater.
Most recently, Yagil launched Theater.Academy, an innovative online platform offering acting coaching and on-demand courses used by actors and educators worldwide. Through this initiative, Yagil has expanded his expertise to include on-screen acting and self-tape mastery, blending his knowledge of theater with contemporary performance practices.
Yagil holds an M.F.A. in Theater Directing from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and a B.A. in Theater Directing from Tel Aviv University.
His honors include the Morasha Foundation’s grant for outstanding artists, representing Israel at the Prague Quadrennial with his opera adaptation of Oedipus, and the Yale University President’s Public Service Fellowship.
