ELIZABETH DINKOVA
Director,Writer,Co-Creator
"Iconoclastic but never obscure,
Visionary, but never opaque,
Moving, but never maudlin,
Hers [Dinkova's] is a talent and an agency
That I find compellingly brilliant,
Breathtakingly audacious,
Appealing more to head than heart,
Yet still leaving heart shattered
And forever changed."
-Brad Rudy, Atlanta Theatre Buzz
SALOME, adapted with Jacob Ashworth, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova, orchestrated by Daniel Schlosberg, Heartbeat Opera 2025:
*New York Times Critic's Pick; Best of 2025 Classical Music Events
“...with committed performances and visceral direction, this “Salome” has the scrappy vitality that has made Heartbeat invaluable.”
“In Elizabeth Dinkova’s Heartbeat staging, the palace is a spare and seedy space in the present day, with dirty walls and beat-up office furniture. At one end is a bank of screens bringing in surveillance images from the property...John the Baptist (the baritone Nathaniel Sullivan, somber and appropriately a bit deranged) is being kept not out of sight, down in the libretto’s cistern, but in a clear-walled cell onstage.”
“The lurid Dance of the Seven Veils here begins as very much a young girl’s awkward shimmying before smartly reversing the standard power dynamic: Herod (sung by the tenor Patrick Cook with unusal sweetness) undresses for Salome, rather than vice versa. Played for laughs, this silly start shifts into an abusive sequence that’s intense enough for it to feel plausible, even understandable, when Salome coldly insists on John’s head. “
"In this disgustingly clever new production, the company takes one of the most difficult works in the opera canon and turns it inside out."
"By the end of Heartbeat Opera’s sly, brilliant new production by Elizabeth Dinkova, it’s very clear that everyone in Salome’s horrifying incestuous family is responsible. If she’s a monster, it’s because they looked upon her and made her into one."
"Dinkova is attuned to the operations of the gaze in the text and in the opera house. Narraboth surveils everyone, especially Salome, on security cameras that show us spaces beyond the opera house. Jokanaan’s prison is a glass box in the center of the stage. We can see right through it to his painfully bare legs, and his beheading is only hidden by a blanket. The moments before his execution, where he nods assent to Jeremy Harr’s servant-cum-executioner, were among the most affecting."
"Dinkova dares us all to objectify Salome; just try it, and you’ll end up exposed yourself."
-Gabrielle Ferrari, The Observer
"I've never seen the work achieve more genuine (and genuinely troubling) sensuality than here...In this intimate rendering, Heartbeat set the bar high for the Met's upcoming new 'Salome.'"
-Opera News
PROFESSOR WOLAND'S BLACK MAGIC ROCK SHOW, music by Michael Pemberton, lyrics by Michael & Andrea Pemberton, book by Jesse Rasmussen & Elizabeth Dinkova, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova, Spooky Action Theater 2025:
*Helen Hayes Recommended
"Do you suppose now would be a good time for a theatrical parable about artists resisting totalitarianism? If your answer is yes (or even a guarded maybe) — for instance, because the U.S. today looks a lot like a reckless autocracy ascendant, and the nation’s foundational democracy looks like an endangered species — you may be gobsmacked by the lavishly produced antiauthoritarian fantasia now exploding in Spooky Action Theater"
"Much credit to Elizabeth Dinkova, artistic director of Spooky Action Theater, who selected, developed, and impressively directed this major new contribution to American musical theater. Not unlike its precursors Hadestown and Jesus Christ Superstar, Professor Woland’s Black Magic Rock Show is made of great music matched to dense preexisting material. But while the underlying narrative this work draws from a Russian novel may be familiar to fewer — its story is neither Greek-mythic nor Christian-scriptural — there is no denying that this beautifully rebellious rock show has come to town at just the right time."
"The musical’s creators, including book writers Jesse Rasmussen and Elizabeth Dinkova (the latter directs), shrewdly reimagine the tale’s demonic characters as louche but charismatic rock musicians performing in a dive bar."
-John Stoltenberg, DC Theater Arts
"Dinkova and her colleagues made some savvy choices in condensing Bulgakov’s epic masterpiece, preserving its wicked humor and elegiac sadness, while necessarily sacrificing much anti-Stalinist satire."
-Celia Wren, The Washington Post
FRONTIERES SANS FRONTIERES, by Phillip Howze, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova, Spooky Action 2024:
"REFRESHING, BITING, FUNNY, AND RELEVANT”
“The piece is ‘super strong.’ Robust direction from Elizabeth Dinkova and the POWERHOUSE script from Phillip Howze really allows the actors to do moving, honest work.”
"ENCHANTINGLY SARDONIC...Directed by Spooky’s artistic director Elizabeth Dinkova displaying a knack for comic irony worthy of Howze’s WICKEDLY WRY script...BRILLIANT PRODUCTION."
THE SEAGULL, by Elizabeth Dinkova, inspired by Chekhov, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova:
"Absolutely breathtaking."
-Georgia Theatre Guide
"Dinkova's staging is a sensory delight."
"There is a moment in the play where a horned monster dances behind a shimmery curtain while light bounces off of it, illuminating the faces of the spectators in the first several rows as they gape at the spectacle. It's a moment that I could watch over and over for its horrifying beauty."
-Amy Zippeper from BWW
"An uncomfortable sense of recognition is for me the ultimate test of whether a Chekhov performance has landed well. The occasional urge to huddle under my chair with my fingers in my ears during the second act must, in the end, be taken as a measure of the show’s success.
-Andrew Alexander from ArtsATL
"A sly avant-garde piece dripping with gender politics, an immersive lyrical experience of pure theatricality that uses Chekhov's play as a guide and outline rather than as a blueprint to be followed religiously."
"So, will you like The Seagull? I really can't say - I know a lot of folks have little patience with avant-garde stagings that resist casual consumption. On the other hand, as motifs and echoes of Chekhov's themes pingpong through the events, and, as these stylistic flourishes take over the story, they actually become more desired. So much so that, after the climax, I truly wanted to join the rest of the cast ripping out the guts of that stupid f*cking bird."
-Brad Rudy, Atlanta Theatre Buzz
RAGE, book, lyrics, and direction by Elizabeth Dinkova, music and additional lyrics by Frederick Kennedy
adapted from "Rage" and "Guns" by Stephen King
"Quinnipiac Students Unleash Suppressed 'Rage'", American Theatre Magazine
"A Coming of 'Rage' Story", Quinnipiac Chronicle
"Far too often, the suffering of women within literature and classic texts is glossed over or used merely as motivation for other characters deemed more important. Tit masterfully defies this trope by putting Lavinia in a central position on stage and in the story. The decision to give Lavinia a voice and an outlet for her internal conflict and external sufferings transforms the play and puts a heartrending perspective on a character who had otherwise been used as a prop for others' motivations. Thanks to said decision, the play is transformed from one of senseless violence to one that contemplates the internal mindscape of those caught up in such violence. Lavinia's role change transforms the entire play, and this transformation is only more stirring when compared to the original play."
-Leigh Pirch, Odyssey
BULGARIA! REVOLT!, co-created by Miranda Rose Hall and Elizabeth Dinkova, music by Michael Costagliola:
"Dinkova and Hall, with their composer and sound designer, Michael Costagliola, have concocted a musical that sustains its dramatic intentions while keeping its ironies in play. And that makes for a rather mercurial evening of theater, full of surprising turns and tones. The show incorporates the political history of Bulgaria, a deal with the devil, and the shameful working conditions in the Chicago meat-packing district in the 1920s. Ambitious? Yes, but that’s just another word for having a lot on its mind."
"A harrowing situation in Act 2 almost strips aside all the comic burlesque in favor of the most abject horror, and it’s a great tribute to Dinkova’s resources as a director that the show can shift toward the bathetic and recover its humor. In fact, the situation Dinkova and Hall create is a sharp commentary on the dehumanization of capitalist production at its most callous."
Review by Donald Brown, New Haven Review
ADAM GEIST by Dea Loher, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova:
"Adam Geist is not a feel-good play, but it is a powerful play that mirrors a time when criminality and heroism, predators and protectors, are as tellingly intertwined in our weekly news reports as ever. Without distorting the original text, Elizabeth Dinkova makes Adam Geist a tale for our times."
"In casting Martinez, a non-white actor, as a product of the Austrian underclass, the Cab’s show adds an allegorical level that’s important, it seems to me, in this first U.S. production of the play. When, in his final speech, Adam makes a selfie video addressed to “Mr. President” most viewers aren’t going to be thinking about the president of Austria; they’re going to see a young African-American male trying to put his case before our president, another African-American male, so that when Adam says “perhaps I’m no longer your concern” those lines resonate beyond Loher’s initial setting to take in the current atmosphere of blacklivesmatter."
Review by Donald Brown, New Haven Review
ANTARCTICA! Which Is To Say Nowhere by Miranda Rose Hall, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova:
Review by Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant
Review by Donald Brown, New Haven Review
Preview by Donald Brown, New Haven Review
BORIS YELTSIN by Mickael de Oliveira, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova:
Review by Christopher Arnott, New Haven Theater Jerk
Review by Donald Brown, New Haven Review