Julia Flood, Artistic Director
Julia Flood moved from Florida to St. Louis in January 2014 to become the Artistic Director of Metro Theater Company. She spent 16 years as Artistic Director of Eckerd Theater Company, a Theater for Young Audiences (TYA) company in Florida, after many years as a freelance actor/director/teaching artist/playwright. A graduate of Northwestern University, Julia spent seven years as a resident member of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, an artist-led ensemble founded under the guidance and artistic direction of legendary acting teacher Alvina Krause, in Pennsylvania. There she first learned the importance of theater for young audiences and began to work on devising and developing new works for the theater. Julia’s 40 years of experience in the professional theater has led her from her native New England to New York, Los Angeles, Florida, Pennsylvania and to many points in between before she landed at her artistic home with MTC here in St. Louis. Julia has a passion for the power of theater to change the course of a young person’s life, and for developing and encouraging new voices in the theater. Julia has commissioned, produced and directed many new plays, including the recent The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus by Broadway playwright Eric Coble, which was developed as part of New Visions/New Voices 2018 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Julia served on the national board of Theatre for Young Audiences/USA from 2011 until 2019 and continues to work to support the national field of TYA.