emily lyon
director & story editor
About Emily
insight & impact - care & context - humor & authenticity
Emily Lyon is an award-winning NYC-based director, dramaturg, and artistic director that carves out the humor and authenticity in new and classic texts. As stories shape our cultural imagination, she is passionate about creating community conversations about feminism, climate change, responsible politics, and media ecology. She has directed 10 world premieres, 25+ full productions, and helped shape 30+ new plays.
She is the Artistic Director of Expand the Canon – a call to action to include historic women's works as classics. Expand the Canon features 52 classic plays by past women playwrights, and has partnered with companies such as Fiasco Theater, American Shakespeare Center, Classic Stage Company, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, The Sol Project, INTAR, American Repertory Theatre, Irish Rep, Bay Area Drama, and others. Her curatorial work extended to editing a book of monologues from the 52 plays, which is currently available in print: 110 Standout Classic Monologues for Any Actor. She also co-hosts and produces This Is A Classic: The Expand the Canon Theatre Podcast.
Emily has been working on classical theatre since 2004, and directed her first Hamlet before she was 21. She studied at Shakespeare's Globe in London, and worked with the Folger Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare in the Park, and others. In 2026, she was awarded a Folger Artistic Research Fellowship. Six of her full productions have been of Shakespeare plays, and she has assistant or associate directed for 11. She has been a recipient of the Drama League Classical Directing Fellowship, at The Old Globe and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and a Geva Theatre Directing Fellow, directing As You Like It. Her SDCF Observership was spent cutting the script of The Tempest with Michael Greif for Shakespeare in the Park.
As a freelance dramaturg, she has helped writers shape 30+ new plays. She co-created the Social Impact Writers Lab with Emmy-winner Adnaan Wasey in 2020. As former Literary Manager of BEDLAM, she created MadLAB: A Reading for Directors which benefited 35 artists, and acted as dramaturg for Kate Hamill's Sense & Sensibility, now one of the most-produced plays in the country. She now does story editing and dramaturgy work freelance.
Around digital media's impacts, she created and produced How We Hear, a theatrical piece looking at political debates through US history in search of returning nuance to our divisive conversations. Inspired by Neil Postman and media ecology, she tells stories that interrogate our media systems and cultural narratives/assumptions.
In environmental storytelling, Emily was part of the Hollywood Climate Summit for several years, as well as a YEA! Junior Board Member. In March 2020, she was selected as part of the first U.S. cohort of the Creative Climate Leadership, created by Julie's Bicycle and hosted at Biosphere 2, which engaged a wide range of artists in how to tell powerful climate change stories. She was also part of the Civilians R&D Group, gamifying environmental justice.
BFA: University of Michigan - summa cum laude. At Michigan, she co-founded Filmic Productions, where she was a key creative and story editor – she wrote award-winning scripts, directed actors, and shaped edits. The company left a legacy at University of Michigan that continues today. Go Blue!
