Bio 

James Blaszko (he/him) has been called “a major young, new directing talent” (The Sunday Mail) that shows “the potential our increasingly multidisciplinary future holds for both theatrical innovation and inclusion” (Howlround.com). His diverse exposure to arts and culture began at an early age as a queer first-generation American raised in a Polish-Pakistani household. Before the pandemic, Blaszko staged Puccini’s Il Trittico in South Korea, the opening ceremony of the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe, and Britten’s Les Illuminations with selections of Debussy and Patti Smith in Maine. He returned to live performance in 2021 by devising and staging Puccini and Verdi Play Ball with Tulsa Opera on their city’s baseball stadium, and reviving Yuval Sharon’s reverse-order La bohème at Boston Lyric Opera in 2022.

This year, James staged Xerxes at Detroit Opera (conducted by Dame Jane Glover), directed/co-produced Swann, a digital opera short by Tamar-kali that honors William Dorsey Swann, the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather, and made his Lincoln Center directing debut with Freedom is a Constant Struggle in Damrosch Park.

James is the co-founder of Apotheculture Club, a national audience cultivation initiative that promotes an inclusive approach to the experience of attending live arts and a positive culture around the legal consumption of cannabis. Founded in 2023, the club has engaged with Detroit Opera House, Detroit Public Theatre, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Santa Fe Symphony.

Blaszko’s collaborations with Cuban filmmaker Adolfo Mena Cejas include Tell The Story, a documentary for John Doyle’s Classic Stage Company about the seminal New York productions of Sondheim’s Assassins over the the past 30 years, and Zenon, which was selected by the New Haven Documentary Film Festival in 2020.

Blaszko has worked as a creative producer for ArtsEmerson as well as a programming assistant at Harlem Stage, deepening his passion for civic engagement through risk-taking work. In 2023 produced the first stop of Liza Jessie Peterson’s solo play The Peculiar Patriot since its notorious shutdown at Angola State Penitentiary in 2020, and subsequent Oscar-shortlisted documentary Angola Do You Hear Us? now streaming on Paramount Plus.

Blaszko was the 2019 Directing Fellow for the Kurt Weill Foundation of Music. He has worked with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Opera Philadelphia, Detroit Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Omaha, Opera San Jose, Boston Lyric Opera, Portland Opera, Bay Chamber Concerts, Spoleto Festival USA, Tom Kirdahy Productions, The American Repertory Theater, Arizona Theater Company, Detroit Public Theatre, City Theatre Company, Speakeasy Stage Company, Bard College, and the Manhattan School of Music.