Born into a multicultural household, surrounded by her Mexican-American father’s exquisite figurative paintings and her Jewish mother’s creative life choices, Juliette Carrillo was encouraged to conceive adventurous alternatives for her life and live with authenticity. Family friends say she built little fantastical worlds with objects from a very young age, finding her path as a theater artist quite early.
Carrillo has directed critically-acclaimed plays in major regional theaters across the country, including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory and the Mark Taper Forum. She began playwriting about 10 years ago and has written three commissioned plays for Cornerstone Theater Company, performed with and about various California communities: Plumas Negras, with East Salinas farmworkers, Ghost Town with the Venice community; and Pedro Play, with the San Pedro community. Plumas Negras was a Nuestras Voces finalist for Repertory Español and is being produced at universities nationwide. She is a graduate of Yale School of Drama.
At MacDowell, Carrillo worked on three new projects. She put the finishing touches on her new play, Tailbone to Tailbone, and began a new play, currently titled The Healing Play. She also finished a first draft of her screenplay, currently titled The San Ignacio Project, which is scheduled to be shot in Baja California 2027.
