Martavius
Parrish
Broadway Creative. Educator. Entrepreneur.
ABOUT
ME
Martavius Parrish is a Black, Queer, Queens-based director, producer, and creative multipotentialite whose work spans theater, opera, music, movement, and film. Cultivated from an expressively Southern-American lineage and upbringing, the foundation of his creativity has been forged as a refuge and engine of opposition to religiously and racially oppressive systems, which has evolved into an unabashed curiosity to interrogate, dissect, and deconstruct societally prescribed confines. His work reframes an artist’s responsibility as a divine edict to guide humanity back to self-recognition (and, thus, inherent value) in the “other” through discerning and restorative engagement with their truths. His interpretations champion the emphasis of the subversive perspective of the marginalized as an imperative default. Through his own reclamation of spirituality, vulnerability, ancestral excellence, community, and sensuality, his interpretations synthesize a studied history of craftsmanship with an intentionally disruptive remixing of ideologies inspired by the historied ingenuity and resilience of the Black and Brown artists before him.
His work’s voice is characterized by its sleek, but muscular aesthetic of stylistic movement and harmoniously integrated transitions that call upon psychology principles of mirroring and innate cognition as visually subtextual debris. Driven by an acute reverence for the balance of rigor and romp, he uses playful invitation and the kinetic neuroscience of distance, gesture, viewpoint, rhythm, and spontaneity to entice his audience toward increasingly expansive empathy through the portals of familiarity and intuitive legibility. His creative north stars are experiences that are jubilantly ravenous in their audacity, analytically meticulous in their excavation, and explosively activating in their transmission.
He was most recently the director of the well-reviewed Edinburgh Fringe show Letters to Joan. Prior to that, he made his Off-Broadway directing debut with Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine (which received 3 AUDELCO nominations, including Best Revival of a Play and a win for Best Featured Actress in a Play). He’s developed several new works with companies including The Dramatists Guild, American Opera Projects, Cry Havoc, and the New York Shakespeare Exchange.
Previous Associate Director credits include Lear deBessonet’s 6-time Tony Nominated revival of Into The Woods (Broadway, Tour, & New York City Center), Once Upon A Mattress (Broadway & LA), Ragtime (City Center), Oliver! (City Center), and Hercules (Workshop), as well as productions with the McCarter Theatre Center, Cincinnati Playhouse, and Out of the Box Theatricals. He’s a 2024 Drama League Directing Fellow and Inaugural NYU Tisch Department of Design for Stage and Film Directors Fellow and holds a Bachelors of Science in Neuroscience from Duke University and a Masters of Music in Vocal Performance from NYU Steinhardt.
