About Me:
Brandy Austin is an accomplished director, producer and teacher, and she enjoys balancing projects in the theatre, music, film and television industries. Recent Chicago productions include directing How I Learned to Drive, Extremities, Devil Sedan and The Kid Thing. In Chicago, Brandy has worked at Northlight Theatre, The Athenaeum and at Steppenwolf Theatre as Assistant Director on the Jeff Award-winning The Pain and the Itch. She also had the pleasure of assisting James Lapine on the Broadway in Chicago production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and recently was the Associate Director for Feather: Off Broadway.
She was also recently a Talent Producer at Turner Broadcasting and has coached and managed many celebrities including actors, comedians, singers, and speakers. She has worked with TCM, OWN, TLC, GAC, Hallmark, Lifetime, Cartoon Network, CNN, FilmStruck and many regional and off-broadway theatres. She has Field Produced for a number of Feature Documentaries with director Dawn Porter including The Way I See It and John Lewis: Good Trouble, and she has toured with numerous artists including The Judds, Little Big Town, Montgomery Gentry, John Cusack, Kathy Najimy and stand-up comics on USO tours. With the Judds, she served as Road Manager for Naomi Judd on their Last Encore Tour and also appeared as a recurring character on their docu-series on the Oprah Winfrey Network. She had the pleasure of assisting on Hallmark Channel’s Spirit Table with Maya Angelou, and two of Hallmark’s recent films: The Nearlyweds and Window Wonderland. She also coached on-set of the feature film: Evergreen Christmas and for Lifetime's Killing Game with director Bobby Roth.
She holds an MFA in Directing from The Theatre School at DePaul and has taught at numerous universities. She has served as faculty at DePaul University in Chicago and at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. At DePaul, she recently directed Sideways Stories from Wayside School for their Chicago Playworks Series, as well as Summer and Smoke and An American Daughter. Brandy served as Guest Faculty at NDSU in 2020, directing Into the Woods and in 2008, she served as Guest Faculty at Centenary College in Shreveport, LA directing the regional premiere of Echo Boom. Brandy has taught and adjudicated for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Regions 3 & 6.