Meet Kristina

Kristina Melsheimer (she/her/ella) is a Chilean-American theatre director, choreographer, actor, and educator. While she is based in New York City, she splits her time between the city and California’s Central Coast, where she grew up.

Kristina holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with Honors from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as well as a Master of Education in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

As a director, Kristina has an extreme eye for detail. Her detail-oriented approach to directing allows for her actors and designers to have more freedom to create and imagine. She then synthesizes these collaborative ideas into a production that is representative of everyone who worked on it while still maintaining a clear vision.

Kristina’s first introduction to the performing arts was through dance. She is a lifelong dancer and loves to share the incredible joy and release that can come through movement. Her choreography is rooted in storytelling and curiosity.

While at NYU, Kristina trained with multiple acting studios. The foundation of her acting training is rooted in Method Acting through The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. At Strasberg, Kristina was able to expand on her unique sensitivity in performance. She also spend a summer in Amsterdam through the International Theatre Workshop (ITW) in which she found expansion and creativity through classes such as Clowning, Brecht, Choreography, and Original Work. Her last year at NYU was spent in the Experimental Theatre Wing (ETW) where she reconnected with her body through Grotowski and Viewpoints work. Kristina’s acting is a unique blend of her training and experiences where she finds character and relationship both from the inside-out and from the outside-in.

Kristina has found solace in theaters, dance rooms, and on the beach, however, she will always feel most at home in a classroom. She has been grateful to have some incredible learning experiences and she is determined to continue to legacy of learning on to as many people as possible. Her capstone project in USC PASA’s program focused on improving accessibility in the accommodations process for theatre training programs in higher education institutions. She is committed to challenging the narratives in higher education, especially in theatre training programs, that insist a deference to “tradition” often at the expense of shutting the door in the faces of theatre student hopefuls. Through classes such as Student Disability Issues in Higher Education, Identity and Diversity, and Race and Racism in Higher Education taught by leading DEI expert, Shawn Harper, Kristina has affirmed this commitment to expanding access to higher education. Her background as a theatre-maker, higher education administrator, and former theater student uniquely situate her to continue to break down barriers and revolutionize the way we envision theater education.