Faculty

Nicole Burdette is a playwright and an actress. She adapted her critically acclaimed play Chelsea Walls into a screenplay, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, directed by Ethan Hawke.  Nicole co-founded and named the theater company Naked Angels, where many of her plays have been produced; The Bluebird Special Came Through Here (directed by Rebecca Miller), Busted (directed by Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton, starring Ashley Judd), Chelsea Walls (directed by Tony Award winner Edwin Sherin), etc. As an actress Nicole has worked with directors Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Alan Parker, John Patrick Shanley, Kenneth Lonergan, Matthew Broderick, David Salle, Alan Taylor, Michael Mayer, Ethan Hawke, etc. in both theater and film. Nicole’s poetry, fiction and non –fiction have been published in several magazines and books. She has received the Best Screenplay Award from the Newport Film Festival. Nicole was the recipient of the Agnes Ranjo Capps Fellowship for playwriting in conjunction with The University of Montana’s Montana Repertory Theatre. Nicole has served as adjunct faculty at both Columbia University’s Film School as well as their distinguished Writing Program. Nicole graduated with honors from New York University with a triple major in Acting, Writing and the Humanities and additionally was the recipient of The Founders Day Scholar Award. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School's prestigious Schools of Public Engagement whose former faculty include poets Robert Frost and Frank O’Hara. In 2018 she was nominated for the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.