Megan Sandberg-Zakian is a theater artist, author, and facilitator. Across all facets of her work, she focuses on holding space for difficult conversations, creating engagements that can accommodate multiple complex truths, and allowing buried narratives to emerge. Her book, There Must Be Happy Endings: On a Theater of Optimism and Honesty, is available from The 3rd Thing Press.
An award-winning theater director, Megan focuses on the development of vital new plays for the stage and the ear. Favorite recent projects include Nat Turner in Jerusalem (New York Theatre Workshop), House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre), Skeleton Crew (Huntington Theatre Co), Mr. Parent (The Lyric Stage) and Audible Originals Rapture Season and Evil Eye (Audie Award for Best Original Work; Gracie Award for Original Online Programming). Her stage productions have been honored many times, including with Boston’s Elliot Norton Awards. Megan has previously served as the Associate Artistic Director of Underground Railway Theater (Cambridge, MA), the Providence Black Repertory Company (RI), and The 52nd Street Project (NYC), and as Director-in-Residence at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA. She was a participant in the first ever TCG Diversity and Inclusion Institute, and is the creator of a resource for identifying theater designers and technicians of color.
With her wife, psychologist Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian, Megan is the co-founder of creative leadership consultancy Humanstudio, a boutique consultancy currently focusing on programs at the intersection of unconscious group dynamics, racial identity, and leadership. She is also an Associate at BIPOC-led executive search firm ALJP Consulting, and a co-founder of Maia Directors, a consultancy that supports artists and organizations engaging with stories from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Megan is a graduate of Brown University and holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. She has taught classes and workshops at Brown University, Yale University, Harvard University, and Northeastern University. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Theater Award and the TCG Future Leaders fellowship, an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a proud member of SDC, the union for professional stage directors and choreographers.
Megan was born and raised in Seattle, and now lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston with her wife Candice. She enjoys long walks in all varieties of New England weather, identifying the birds in her backyard, and searching for outstanding gluten-free baked goods.