Mo Zhou

Originally from China, Mo Zhou is a stage director, artistic activist, and educator whose international career spans all artistic disciplines including opera, theater, musical theater, dance, and film.  

Ms. Zhou has directed at Santa Fe Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, The Juilliard School, WP Theatre Pipeline Festival, and The New School of Drama, to name a few. She has also worked as staff director at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, among others. She has finished training as James Marcus Directing Fellow at The Juilliard School, with two consecutive summers as the Directing Fellow at Wolf Trap Opera, as well as a 2050 Artistic Fellow with New York Theater Workshop, a Time Warner Directing Fellow with WP Theater and as an Apprentice Stage Director at Merola Opera Program in San Francisco.

In 2019, she conceived and directed the opera The Diary of John Rabe, which looks at The Rape of Nanking through a German businessman John Rabe’s point of view. The production had a critically acclaimed run at NCPA in China, followed with a successful European tour at Staatsoper Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Ronacher in Vienna. The production has been turned into for a 4K opera movie that was distributed internationally in 2020.

An avid advocate for new work, Ms. Zhou has developed new works with American Opera Project, NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and Guerilla Opera in Boston.  Ms. Zhou has earned her BA at Bowdoin College, her MFA in Stage Directing at Columbia University and holds a Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University.