Nicole Ricciardi is a theatre director, actor, producer, and instructor. She has created work for Primary Stages, Youngblood/Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Flea Theater, the Drama Book Shop, Chelsea Repertory Lab, Two River Theater Company, Shadow Lawn Stage, Circle East Theatre Company, Bushwick Arts, Irish Repertory Theater, Central Square Theatre (Boston), New Century Theatre, and Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA. In the summer of 2021, she will direct King Lear, starring Christopher Lloyd, in Shakespeare and Company's Tina Packer Playhouse.
Additionally, Nicole has worked with a company of NYC artists to create: The Juliet and Romeo Project, a cross-gender adaptation of Shakespeare's masterpiece; Roasting Alice, a modern, new musical based on Lewis Carroll's classic story; We Eat Chekhov, a new play with music adapted from the vaudevilles of Anton Chekhov; Article 140, a stage adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's “Les Jeux Sont Faits"; and The Comedie of Errors (As Presented by the Miners of Hell's Half Acre), an all-male production of Shakespeare's play performed by California gold miners in 1852 (and two actual sets of identical twins).
Nicole has taught on the theatre faculties of Drew,
Monmouth, and Syracuse Universities, as well as the National Theater Institute at
the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. For two years, she coordinated Syracuse Drama's program at Shakespeare's Globe, London. She has led classes and workshops for Keene College, Shakespeare and Company, Eastern Connecticut State University, Hartford Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, The New York Film Academy, Two River Theatre Company, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and the Acting Studio, New York.
Nicole received BA degrees in Theatre Arts and Psychology from Drew University and an MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University.