Logan Ellis is a director and producer of theater and film from Kent, Washington. Logan is a 2020 graduate of the MFA Directing program at the Yale School of Drama, where he was awarded the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for Directing.
Logan most recently directed Fun Home at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, for which he was nominated for an Elliot Norton Award for outstanding direction. He currently serves as the Associate Producer at Skylight Theatre Company in Los Feliz, and as a creative partner to Ilia Isorelýs Paulino and Donato Fatuesi with Cusp of Rebirth in Los Angeles, where he directed the films Boat Day and Face Me, and the webseries Friendship/Therapy.
Logan is also the Producing Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Theatre Battery in Kent, Washington. Theatre Battery produces plays for social justice in a donated retail warehouse while practicing radical hospitality and offering free admissions for all programming. At Theatre Battery, he most recently adapted and directed The Threepenny Opera, for which he was nominated for the Gregory Award for outstanding direction of a musical. With the company in the pandemic, Logan directed and animated the webseries LEGO Harry Potter and the Transgender Witch.
While previously working as a freelance director in San Francisco, Logan served as the Producer in Residence at Magic Theatre and the Literary Manager of Playwrights Foundation. Logan has assisted directors including Loretta Greco, Kenny Leon, Daniella Topol, Carey Perloff, and Jonathan Moscone. He shadowed showrunner Justin Noble for HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls. Logan has played viola in the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony and Orchestra Nova LA, along with various chamber ensembles. Logan first worked in Europe with the Luxembourg Philharmonie and Yarn/Wire to direct the international tour of Øyvind Torvund’s Forest Concerts.
Logan received a B.A. in drama from Ithaca College, where he directed Fat Pig and Far Away. He is a graduate of Green River Community College and Kent-Meridian High School.
Photo by David Zaugh
Two shameless plugs:
My brother Dorin Ellis is the #approachablehipstercaptain of the 1933 Classic Yacht MITLITE, and his business hosts sunset cruises, parties, marriage proposals, weddings, funerals, and trip packages around the idyllic waterways of Seattle. In recent years, Dorin has become a leader in the nautical industry in the Pacific Northwest with his passion, friendliness, and craftsmanship.
When I’m lucky, I get to work as a crew member on the MITLITE, and Dorin and I have been working together with his colleagues to restore another classic wooden boat, the FOREVERMORE (1945). We were both raised on boats by our parents.
On the left here is Beatrice Joan King, my grandmother, who along with Jean Mattson (right) ran a two-woman puppet theater that toured the world with original plays performed by handmade puppets. They used a stage that folded down and fit into a pickup truck. Seattle Puppetory Theatre was on a mission to bring delight, education, and cross-cultural exchange to audiences of all ages. They collaborated with some of the most well-known puppeteers and festivals of the 80s and 90s and were frequently commissioned by public schools, libraries, and local government organizations in the Pacific Northwest. In 2010, they were honored with lifetime achievement awards from the Puppeteers of America.
Here is a little video documentary about their life’s work.
Though I haven’t collaborated with them, per se (my mother did tour with them to Pakistan when I was a baby), I hope to carry forward the craft, spirit, and accessibility of my grandmother’s work.