Lila Neugebauer

Lila Neugebauer (born 1985) is an American theatre director, writer and artistic director. After studying at Yale University she started directing numerous theatrical productions. She came to prominence directing the Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan's memory play The Waverly Gallery (2018) which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. She has since directed the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins family drama Appropriate (2023), for which she received a Tony Award nomination, Itamar Moses political satire The Ally (2024), and the Anton Chekhov revival Uncle Vanya (2024).

She had directed multiple episodes of the Mindy Kaling created HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–2022) and she made her directorial film debut with the A24 drama Causeway (2022) starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry.

Early life and education
Neugebauer was born and raised in New York City. A native Upper West Sider, she grew up seeing plays and was exposed to theatre, and credits her mother for a lot of that. She attended the Hunter College High School, where she performed in Seven Minutes in Heaven by fellow student Lin-Manuel Miranda. Neugebauer played a partygoer. Neugebauer was an English major at Yale University. There she befriended actress and playwright Zoe Kazan. She has said that "one of the best classes I took was a constitutional law class". While in Louisville, she received the 2013 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship Award in partnership with Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Career
One of the standout young stage directors, Neugebauer's stage productions include Tracy Letts' Mary Page Marlowe (2018), Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo (2018), and the world premieres of Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves (2017), The Mad Ones' Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (2019) and Miles For Mary (2017), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate (2016) and Everybody (2017) as well as Annie Baker's The Antipodes (2017). Neugebauer has continued to direct various plays off-Broadway.

She made her Broadway debut as a director for Kenneth Lonergan's revival of The Waverly Gallery which debuted at the John Golden Theatre on September 25, 2018 in previews, and officially opened on October 25. The play, produced by Scott Rudin, is considered a "memory play", and starred Elaine May, Lucas Hedges, Michael Cera, Joan Allen, and David Cromer. The play received widespread critical acclaim, including from Ben Brantley, theatre critic for The New York Times, who described her direction as "fine-tuned." The revival received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play, and a win for Best Actress in a Play (Elaine May). That same year she made her television directing debut for episode of the Duplass brothers' HBO series Room 104.

In April 2019, it was announced that Neugebauer would be teaming up with A24 and Scott Rudin to make her directorial film debut with Red, White and Water, later retitled Causeway. It was announced Jennifer Lawrence was attached as a star in the project, and was written by first-time screenwriter Elizabeth Sanders. The project's principal photography started in mid-June 2019 in New Orleans. From 2021 to 2022 she directed multiple episodes of the Mindy Kaling created comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max.

In 2023 she directed the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play Appropriate on Broadway. The production starred Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll, Natalie Gold, and Elle Fanning. The play, a family drama, revolves around a family trying to sell the house after the patriarch's death only to discover a dark secret. The following year she directed the Itamar Moses political play The Ally at The Public Theater. Josh Radnor stars as a Jewish college professor who is conflicted when asked to sign a political manifesto by a student. That same year she directed Lincoln Center's revival of Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The cast includes Steve Carell, Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Jayne Houdyshell, and Alfred Molina.