Acclaimed theater director Daniella Topol re-directs her career
If you follow the theater scene in Manhattan, you probably know of the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the West Village. And if you’re familiar with this venerable theater, founded in 1994, the name Daniella Topol is bound to ring a bell. As Rattlestick’s Artistic Director since 2016, Topol has continued its mission “to produce ambitious plays to inspire empathy and provoke conversation that will lead to positive social change.”
If there was a Tony or Obie award for a dramatic career change, Topol might seem a likely recipient. Yet while her announcement that she will be leaving the Company to pursue nursing may have caught the theater world and even friends and family by surprise, it is not as much of a radical departure as it sounds. In a conversation with Regis College Assistant Professor and Nurses’ Station host Lawana Brown, it quickly becomes clear that Topol is nothing if not mission-driven. With an undergraduate degree in directing and a Master of Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon, she will attend nursing school in New York where she lives with her husband and daughter.
