Director
Miami
Teo Castellanos, a 2021 Doris Duke Artist in the theater category, is a director, actor and writer whose powerful work is characterized by his distinctive artistic voice and vividly imagined explorations of societal problems.
His award-winning solo show “NE 2nd Avenue,” commissioned by Miami Light Project, toured broadly for a decade after winning the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 2003. In that same year, Castellanos founded the dance and theater company Teo Castellanos D-Projects, where he creates both solo and ensemble works. His work aims to de-centralize Eurocentric theater models by digging into the storytelling traditions of his native Puerto Rico, and examining social issues through performance. For the past 30 years, Teo has toured works throughout United States, the Caribbean, Europe, South America and China.
His most recent solo, “Third Trinity,” is a 22-character play written and performed by Castellanos with direction and dramaturgy by 2014 Doris Duke Artist, MacArthur Fellow, Academy Award winner, and longtime collaborator, Tarell Alvin McCraney. The play was adapted from a feature-length screenplay written by Castellanos based on his family’s life, and it tells a unique Miami story of three Puerto Rican brothers whose lives take starkly divergent paths. Additional acting theater credits include playing Elegba in Alvin McCraney’s “The Brothers Size” in Miami and Santos in The Hittite Empire’s “Skeletons of Fish” in London.
Teo Castellanos is also a 2019 United States Artist Fellow and a recipient of several awards and grants including from the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, MAP Fund, National Performance Network, the Knight Arts Challenge, the Knight Foundation People’s Choice Award and the Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs. He was additionally awarded with the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in 2005 and 2013. He is a 2015 Sundance Institute Screen Writers Fellow, a member of Screen Actors Guild and Associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
