BEN VILLEGAS RANDLE (he/him) was the 2019 Drama League Leo Shull Musical Theatre Directing Fellow. Before relocating to NYC, he spent 15 years in San Francisco developing original plays and musicals, directing West Coast and regional premieres, and re-imagining classics.
Ben creates from his experience as a Queer, Latine son of an immigrant, transforming Otherness into a window to view society with empathy, rage, celebration, and connection. In short, he tells stories of individuals battling for existence, searching for community.
In 2023, he directed the second production of Christopher Oscar Peña’s How to Make an American Son at Profile Theatre, in Portland, OR.
In New York, Ben directed a new re-imagined production of Michael John LaChiusa’s musical Hello Again with four actors, for Drama League’s DirectorFest 2020; a world premiere by Anniello Fontano for NYU/Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute; Clare Baron’s Dance Nation for NYU/Atlantic Acting School, and a virtual film of Lauren Yee’s existential slasher comedy Hookman for Atlantic Training Company; the world premiere of Plover by Ryan Fogarty in the 2018 Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, while developing two new plays by Fogarty. He was also a 2017-18 Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow.
In San Francisco, Ben spent four seasons as the first Artistic Associate at New Conservatory Theatre Center, San Francisco’s premier LGBTQIA theatre for almost 40 years, where he directed world premieres of Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman, warplay by JC Lee (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award Nom., Best Director), and Salome, Dance for Me, an original glam rock musical he conceived by rock musician and award-winning cisgender female drag queen trixxie carr, with Robert Mollicone of San Francisco Opera.
Other world premieres include Into the Clear Blue Sky by JC Lee (BATCC Nom., Best Director), and The Fisherman’s Wife by Steve Yockey.
Other premieres include the Bay Area Premiere of Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet, West Coast premiere of The Submission by Jeff Talbott and Bay Area Premiere of The Chalk Boy by Joshua Conkel.
Ben has worked at New York Stage and Film, CalShakes, Aurora Theatre, Latinx Playwrights Circle, National Queer Theater, Just Theater, Thrillpeddlers, Brava! and West Edge Opera. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University and a member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab.
