Eleanor Reissa is an actress, singer, choreographer, director, and playwright. Her Off-Broadway  acting and directing credits include: BAR MITZVAH BOY (1978), THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY (1987), SONGS OF PARADISE (1989), ALGERIAN ROMANCE (1989), THE SECRET SITS IN THE MIDDLE (1990), ZISE KHALOYMES/ SWEET DREAMS (1990), ALL THAT GLITTERS (1994), FUNKY CRAZY BOOGALOO BOY (1995), COWGIRLS (1996), THE LAST SURVIVOR (1996), AN AMERICAN FAMILY (2000), SONG OF THE TURTLEDOVE (2001), DIANA OF DOBSON’S (2001), YENTL (2002), OUT OF STERNO (2002), ECHOES OF THE WAR (2004), THE SKIN GAME (2005), SOLDIER’S WIFE (2006), HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (2009), HERSHELE OSTROPOLYER (2010), THE MATERIAL WORLD (2012), EAST TOWARDS HOME (2013), THE SCUTLEY PAPERS (2014), GOD OF VENGEANCE (2016), MIAMI (?), and A KLEZMER’S TALE (1998). Reissa has worked with numerous Off-Broadway theater companies, including American Jewish Theatre, Cherry Lane Alternative, Dixon Place, The Theatre Asylum, Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, John Houseman Theatre, La MaMa E.T.C, Minetta Lane Theatre, Mint Theater, Naked Angels, National Yiddish Theatre, NYSF/The Public Theatre, Playwrights' Horizons, Primary Stages, Theatre for a New City, and Theatre Four.

Eleanor Reissa was born in Brooklyn, NY. As the child of Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the United States in 1949, her first language was Yiddish. Her mother put her in daycare at a ballet school, where she began her education in dance performance. Her father took her to her first Broadway show, The Zulu and the Zayda. Attending Brooklyn College she became interested in politics which led her to activist street theatre and the world of Off-Off-Broadway. She waited tables until her first Equity show, the national tour of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Her Broadway credits include: Those Were the Days (1990), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1990), My Fair Lady (1993), and Indecent (2017).  She also directed numerous regional and international shows including: Avenue X (1999), Over The Rainbow: Yip Harburg’s America (2000), The Screams Of Kitty Genovese (2001), Syncopation (2003), Blood Drive (2006), Hershele Ostropolyer (2010), The Threepenny Opera (2013), and Yidl Mitn Fidl (2014). She was the Artistic Director for the Folksbiene Theatre from 1998 to 2002, was a member of the Circle Rep Lab, and received numerous fellowships, awards, and nominations over the course of her career. In 1991, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Those Were the Days (1990), which she also choreographed.  In 1997, she was a playwriting fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation of Arts & Letters. In 2000, her unproduced show, Wishful Thinking, won the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition. She has translated a number of works from English to Yiddish, authored numerous articles, and is working on a memoir, “The Letters Project.”. Most recently she co-wrote and directed From Shtetl to Stage for Carnegie Hall.  She has also been commissioned by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene to co-write the translation to Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man, which she is slated to direct.  And she is currently the host of the podcast Those Who Were There: Voices of the Holocaust.