Press / Reviews
What people are saying about Heather Arnson's work - in the room and on the stage and screen.
Leigh
Silverman
"Heather [Arnson] is a detail-oriented, thoughtful, driven woman who is at the brink of launching into the director she is meant to be."
Read More
BREAKING NEWS
Broadway Women's Alliance Announces New Docu-Series HERE'S TO THE LADIES WHO
"The Broadway Women's Alliance and YesAnd Productions today announced Here's To The Ladies Who, a new docu-series that will tell the stories of the women working on the business side of Broadway (and beyond) with a focus on their journeys and the industry, and how they adapted and changed during the pandemic...'Our goal is to highlight, celebrate, and document all that women of theatre have triumphed through and will continue to thrive out of.'" - BroadwayWorld.com | READ MORE
HERE'S TO THE LADIES WHO Receives Grant from The Awesome Foundation
"Here’s to the Ladies Who” is a celebration of women who continue to overcome obstacles, paving a way as inspiration for future women. The themes highlighted throughout the series include overcoming challenges through adapting and pivoting, motherhood, race, professional relationships, and experiencing tough moments and how we collectively move forward." - The Awesome Foundation | READ MORE
HERE'S TO THE LADIES WHO Drops March 11
“This project started out with a simple goal: to capture stories from the women who were on the ground when Broadway shut down,” Arnson said in a statement. "We are sharing the experiences of women who have been in the industry for decades interweaving their accounts with those who have been here for only a few months (and everyone in between), thus creating an incredible and profound tapestry." - Playbill | READ MORE
IN THE ROOM
Leigh Silverman, Director
“I experienced a glimpse of what Heather [Arnson] has to offer as an A.D., thoughtful and insightful observations, the ability to know when to interject and when not to do so, along with what she has to develop into a fully professional director in her own right. Heather is a detail-oriented, thoughtful, driven woman who is at the brink of launching into the director she is meant to be.”
ON STAGE AND SCREEN
PBS | WTTW News
Mark Vitali
“It’s terribly exciting, and it’s really fresh, and it’s really wonderful to work…”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
The Adult in the Room
Michael Wilson, Director
“Among other on-going collaborations of ours, Heather [Arnson] served as my Associate Director for the world-premiere production of FELLOW TRAVELERS at Bay Street Theatre. Heather was invaluable throughout the rehearsal process working seamlessly with the stage management and design teams. She took on the role of dramaturg with great enthusiasm. Her contributions to seeing us through a very truncated tech schedule was nothing short of a star turn. She is extremely bright, articulate, organized, responsible, clever and great company. Heather is a smart, warm, devoted, and insatiably curious young director.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK
Quin Marquardt
“Five Stars. A deeply satisfying emotional roller coaster, with peaks of gut-wrenching laughter and lows that bring you close to tears.”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
The Permanent Night
Sarah Benson, Artistic Director - Soho Rep
“My first experience working with Heather was on Lucas Hnath's DISNEY. I was blown away by how her care for the work went beyond the bounds of regular stage management & into the realm of really thinking about every single person in the room as a person. When I now think of all the wonderful contributions that Heather has made to our theater over the last 4 years, that is what continually sticks out. Heather has contributed so much more to our theater because she has embodied our value of thinking about everybody in the room as a person - in a brilliant daily fashion. Heather, I am so excited for this next chapter of your journey where you get to embrace your work as an artist and spend more of your time where I know you love to be: in the rehearsal room.”
BACKSTAGE WEST
Jennie Webb
“[I]n a gutsty debut production from a new company…Dario Fo’s distinctively styled play about England’s virgin queen rears its not-so-subtle satirical head here in Los Angeles, with delightfully shamelessly comic results. It’s a streetwise in-your-face political commedia, which works best when rules are broken. Director Heather Arnson does a beautiful job mounting the show, assembling a talented cast and doubling as designer.”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
Elizabeth: Almost By Chance A Woman
Julie Richardson, Playwright - LIFE & OTHER DISASTERS, LEGACY, LIGHT & SHADOW, ON THE ROCKS
“Heather enters each production with a clear vision of her goals, relying on her cultivated intuition and application of her practical skills to guide her through the exploration.
She exhibits the ability to adapt seeming catastrophes into opportunities by adeptly addressing the challenges and frustrations of mounting a production with grace. Her guidance of the actors with a firm, but compassionate, hand results not only in performances to be proud of, but in a loyalty and affection from the cast, plus she instills confidence throughout the creative and production teams with her boundless knowledge and abilities.
Throughout the process, she always carves out time to nurture me as a playwright. Heather’s talents as a dramaturg and script developer have proven invaluable over the years. Her respectful yet creative suggestions and guidance through this process has benefited our productions enormously and illustrated just how in tune with the work she actually was. ”
LA WEEKLY
Deborah Klugman
“Dario Fo’s Elizabeth I of England is an outrageous character…in the play’s prologue (staged as part of the story by Arnson) a harlequin makes a clear satirical target of the Reagan administration. Under Heather Arnson’s direction Regina (Stacie Merken) transcends the bombastic with her final monologue, when she perforates the utterly ridiculous with the recognizably human.”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
Elizabeth: Almost By Chance A Woman
BROADWAYWORD
Chloe Rabinowitz
"Online theater is a new medium with unique challenges, but we also believe it presents unique opportunities," says Sally Klingenstein-Martell, Executive Producer, NNR. "New Normal Rep, in a small way, aims to help in bridging this disconnect by providing affordable, diverse, high quality theater to a literally limitless audience."
(Heather Arnson, Director)
F.I.R.E.
Lauren Patten, Actor - THE WOLVES, Fun Home, Jagged Little Pill
"[Heather,] Thank you for always taking such good care of us. This show would have been impossible without your help and support. This better not be our only show together!!"
THE BEVERLY HILLS OUTLOOK
Diane Legro
“[Heather Arnson] created a consistent shape and feel and timbre to the family units, yet they were never a wash of sameness.”
(Heather Arnson, Director/Producer)
WASP
Vanessa Reseland, Actor - WEREWOLF HUNTER, Fiasco Theatre - INTO THE WOODS
“[Heather Arnson’s] attitude and shear will to put on the best possible show stuck with me, and I have made it a point to drop whatever else is going on in order to work with her since then. As a director, she has an invaluable way of connecting with actors through her brilliant understanding of text. She has brought a nuanced life to both prize-winning plays and scripts in the thick of a workshop. In fact, I have never seen such commitment to the cultivation of new works and new authors. Heather bends over backwards to make a script-in-progress the best it can possibly be, and I have seen her take a show from an insecure first rehearsal to a proud and moving final production. When Heather speaks, you listen. You listen because you trust. You trust because through collaboration, you learn that you are your best when you are working with Heather.”
BACKSTAGE WEST
Travis Michael Holder
“In this short, intermissionless invasion of our senses, Martin is as full of wacky insight as always, and director Heather Arnson knows just what to do with it. Her large ensemble is triple-cast (something Arnson brought in to the creative process) in the roles of the ever-smiling nuclear family, leaving the overworked cerebellums of her pleasantly captive audience to adjust to the rapid-fire reorganizations.”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
WASP
Rachel Spencer Hewitt, Actor - KING CHARLES III
“Heather [Arnson] has a gift for bringing clarity and drive to complex relationships in new works. Her ability to communicate action in a way that brings the company into a synthesized understanding of the world creates a space that is both safe and stimulating. I saw revelation happen in an actor’s mind, including my own, just from a single conversation with Heather on a moment, a beat, or a movement. The audience’s response from her work is bound to be as visceral, clear, and fully engaged as she is with every page and person in the rehearsal room.”
ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE - ARTS & REVIEWS
“Intelligent and quirky is the best way to describe the ensemble in Heather Arnson’s timely production of WASP. Presented through a huge television box mounted on the set (Arnson served as designer), it was a treat to see the four member household recast not once, not twice, but three times without disruption. Also included as a distraction for scene changes is a sideshow collection of (dramatized) commercials from a throwback era.”
THE PRESS ROOM NYC
“A new play about the decades-long, tempestuous friendship between Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley will receive an industry reading. Directed and developed by Heather Arnson, A Vicious Circle is a witty, heart-breaking dramedy about the ambitions, pride, and loneliness that sharpened the tongues of two of history’s greatest wits.”
(Heather Arnson, Director)
A Vicious Circle