ROLE CALL
EMILY RANII
Profession: Director & artistic leader
Hometown: Born in Chicago, raised in Raleigh, N.C.
Current home: Boston
KNOWN FOR: Work in unusual locations—Shakespeare in a pool, Molière in treehouses. Her credits span the East Coast, from Wheelock Family Theatre, where she is artistic director to Boston University’s Opera Institute and School of Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, and Burning Coal Theatre Company. She’s also served as the academic program head of Boston University’s Summer Theatre Institute since 2013.
WHAT’S NEXT: Wheelock Family Theatre is playing The Little Prince and Bud, Not Buddy, their first time staging shows in rep.
Ranii is “someone I imagine remaking American theatre,” says Jerome Davis, Burning Coal’s founding artistic director. “She grew up in a Southern town of meager means, the child of a journalist and an ethics teacher at a nearby community college. At 13, she played Juliet for us. Hard as it may be to
