Leo Egger

Leo Egger is a director and playwright interested in make-believe. He is the founding artistic director of the Eno River Players, a NYC theater company devoted to classical theater and original adaptations. Leo and the company’s principles are: 1. Do more with less, 2. New audiences want meaningful experiences, 3. True wonder in the theater is possible, and 4. Embrace not knowing. 

He has directed numerous classics (by Gogol, Williams, Shakespeare, and more) as well as, occasionally, new plays. He wrote, directed, and produced original adaptations of Bulgakov’s Dead Souls, Plato’s Dialogues, and, most recently, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, coauthored with Charlie Mayhew. He is currently working on a production of Measure for Measure. He has worked at Target Margin Theater, Here Arts Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, La Mama Experimental Theatre, Krymov Lab NYC, Culture Lab LIC, and the David Geffen School of Drama. Born and raised in Durham, NC, Leo studied at the Durham School for the Arts and Yale University. 

Artistic discipline:

Theater – directing & playwriting 

Project Vision: 

My current vision for the project is to develop a play about a man who wishes to force the arrival of the Messiah. I would specifically like to explore Leviticus 16, which outlines the priest’s protocol on the Day of Atonement. I am interested in change in two ways here. First, how this ritual of the goat on Yom Kippur itself enacts spiritual transformation––a radical cleansing of a people. And secondly, how the religion of Judaism has been forced to change since the destruction of our temple. How did we, and continue to, adapt our belief systems as Jewish people when the ancient infrastructure of ritual is lost to us?