Our HISTORY | What We Do | Who We Are

Aquila Theatre Company was founded in London by Peter Meineck in 1991 with a production of Aeschylus's Agamemnon at the Bridge Lane Theatre in London before touring in the United States to a few universities. The company, along with its founder moved to the United States in 1994, and in 1998, Aquila Theatre became a U.S.-based non-profit theatre company. It went on to build up an extensive international touring circuit while becoming an established part of the New York City theater scene with its productions of Iliad: Book One at the Clark Studio at Lincoln Center, followed by long-running Off-Broadway productions of Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing. Aquila has also had the pleasure of working with the acclaimed Olympia Dukakis and Louis Zorich in its 2004 production of Agamemnon.

Aquila is now one of the foremost producers of classical theater in the United States visiting 50 - 60 American cities per year with innovative classical productions, workshops, and educational programming, and is under the Artistic Directorship of Desiree Sanchez since 2012. The company has been awarded numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, from which it received a Chairman's Special Award, the New York State Councils for the Arts and Humanities, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Aquila has performed at the White House under the Bush and Obama administrations and has performed for the U.S Supreme Court and for the National Council on the Arts. Aquila was also recently invited by Lin-Manuel Miranda to perform at the U.S. Capitol in support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, for its groundbreaking applied theatre and humanities program: The Warrior Chorus.

PRODUCTIONS IN NEW YORK CITY

Aquila has produced numerous shows in NYC since 2000, most recently at A.R.T NY Theatre Alliance’s Mezzanine Theatre, with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Frankenstein, and new works from the Warrior Chorus (2019). The company has also performed: Sense and Sensibility at the Queens Theatre in the Park (2017); and Our Trojan War at BAM Fisher(2017); Romeo and Juliet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Philoctetes at the GK ArtsCenter in Brooklyn (2016); a staged workshop production of A Female Philoctetes at BAM Fisher Hillman Studio (2015); Euripides’ Herakles at the BAM Fisher (2014); Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the GYM at Judson (2012). A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (2011) and As You Like It and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (2010) at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts; Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Homer’s The Iliad: Book One (2009) at the Lucille Lortel Theatre; Prometheus Bound, with David Oyelowo at Classic Stage Company (2007). Other notable NYC runs include Agamemnon with Olympia Dukakis in 2004 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater; an extended run of Much Ado About Nothing at 45 Bleecker Street in 2001 and The New Victory Theater in 2003.

A MAJOR ANNUAL NATIONAL TOUR

Aquila is the foremost producer of touring classical theatre in the United States, visiting 50-60 American cities per year since 1991. The most recent past touring seasons include Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice created by the ensemble company (2022-2023); a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Shakespeare’s Macbeth (2021/2022); George Orwell’s 1984 and Homer’s The Odyssey (2019/2020); A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (2018/2019); Hamlet and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (2017/2018); Much Ado About Nothing, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile, and Our Trojan War (2016/2017); Romeo and Juliet and Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2015/2016); The Tempest and Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (2014/2015); Aquila has also appeared in numerous festivals and international venues around the world including London, Holland, Germany, Greece, Scotland, Italy, Canada, Bermuda. Highlights include the Festival of the Aegean in Syros, Greece, and the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens.

APPLIED THEATRE AND HUMANITIES

Aquila Theatre has been a leader in applied theatre and humanities programming since 2008 with its award-winning national public programs, Page and Stage, Ancient Greek Modern Lives, You|Stories, and Warrior Chorus, which were all developed in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Warrior Chorus, a national program serving the veteran community, continues its work by using ancient literature and collaborative performance practices to create meaningful dialogue, foster healing, and build supportive communities.  Published articles can be found on the WarriorChorus.org website. Aquila is company-in-residence at NYU Center for Ancient Studies. Through the Center, Aquila has sponsored educational and outreach events such as panels at Lincoln Center on "War Poetry" (1999) and at the Folger Shakespeare Library on "Images of Caesar" (2000). A production of Homer's "Iliad: Book One" was presented as part of the Center's annual Lewent Conference on "Saving the City" in spring 2002. In the spring of 2004, the Lewent Conference, "Performing Justice," was held in conjunction with Aquila's production of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, featuring Olympia Dukakis and Louis Zorich. For Veteran's Day 2014, Aquila Theatre presented scenes from A Female Philoctetes as part of the Lewent Conference "WarStories: Ancient and Modern Narratives of War."Aquila is currently working on expanding its applied theatre programming with its new initiative, The Catharsis Project, which further explores ancient performance practices for healing.

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

For over thirty years, Aquila Theatre has been known for theatrical productions that change the way people think about classical theatre through its commitment to represent multiple perspectives and cultures. This inclusive approach has also been integral to their extensive educational programming with veterans, refugees, and teens from marginalized communities across the United States and Europe, including being company-in-residence at Lincoln Center Institute and New York University.  On tour, Aquila has produced two major initiatives: Workshop America, a nationwide program that provides masterclass and workshop opportunities for middle and high school students to experience various theatre techniques, practices, and approaches that Aquila artists use to make their performances dynamic, powerful, transformative and clearly articulated; Theatre Breakthrough, brings America’s schools to the theatre for full productions and guided tours of a theatrical production followed by talk-backs and Q&As so students can experience the excitement of live performances and learn more about the artists and their process.

Desiree Sanchez (EXECUTIVE Artistic Director)

Desiree Sanchez has been Aquila’s artistic director since 2012. Prior to this, she had a twenty-year career in classical and modern dance, which included working as a principal dancer for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and contemporary work with choreographers such as Sean Curran, Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, and Doug Varone. She holds an MA from Royal Holloway, University of London. Theatre productions she has directed include Pride & Prejudice (2023); Macbeth and The Great Gatsby (2022), Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Odyssey (2019); A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Frankenstein(2018); Hamlet and Sense and Sensibility (2017); Much Ado About Nothing and Our Trojan War (2016); Romeo and Juliet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Philoctetes (2015); The Tempest and Wuthering Heights (2014); A Female Philoctetes at BAM Fisher's Hillman Studio (2014); Twelfth Night and Fahrenheit 451  (2013); The Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac (2012); Herakles (2012) at the Festival of the Aegean in Syros, Greece and at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens and at BAM in 2013; Macbeth and The Importance of Being Earnest  (2011); and Six Characters in Search of an Author (2010). Desiree also wrote the stage adaptations for Frankenstein, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Wuthering Heights and choreographed for A Very Naughty Greek Play, based on Aristophanes' Wasps (2004); Julius Caesar (2006), Catch-22 (2007); The Iliad: Book One and The Comedy of Errors (2008).

Peter Meineck (founder and PUBLIC Program Director)

Peter Meineck founded Aquila Theatre in 1991 and has worked extensively in theater in London and New York. He holds an endowed chair as the Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University where he specializes in ancient performance and the application of cognitive science to the study of the ancient world. He is also Honorary Professor of Humanities at the University of Nottingham and has held fellowships at Harvard, Princeton and the University of California, and the Onassis Foundation. He has published numerous translations of Greek plays with Hackett and was awarded the 2001/02 Lewis Galantiere Award for Literary Translation for his translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. He received the 2009 NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award, a 2009 Humanities Initiative Team Teaching Award, the American Philological Association Outreach Prize. Peter is a regular performing arts contributor to the humanities journal Arion and has published several scholarly articles on Greek drama and Shakespeare.  He recently wrote a new book, Theatocracy: Greek drama, cognition and the imperative for theatre, published by Routledge and edited Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks with David Konstan (Palgrave). He has produced and/or directed more than 50 professional productions of classic drama. He has received significant grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for devising and directing the groundbreaking public programs: You/Stories, Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives (Chairman’s Special Award), and Page and Stage: The Power of The Iliad Today. He also acts as an advisor of Greek literature and mythology, recently to National Geographic, Disney, Fuse TV, and Will Smith (I am Legend). He is a graduate of University College London (BA Hons. Ancient World Studies) and the University of Nottingham (Ph.D. Classics) and a former Royal Marines Reservist. Peter continues to serve as a volunteer firefighter and EMT.

Alex Duncker (Company Manager)

Hailing from beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Alex began her love affair with the performing arts at her local western dinner theatre. After progressing from showgirl to stage manager, she ventured east to pursue a Theatre degree from the University of Vermont. Since moving to New York in 2016, Alex has dabbled in film, managed several inventive new theatrical works (Meshahnye, Late Night at the Serpent, Codependent, Cartography), helped keep the arts alive in 2020-21 working on adaptive outdoor theatre through the streets of Greenwich Village (Voyeur), and produced a pop-up theatre (Destiny Manifests) in a repurposed storefront in Chelsea that presented Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love alongside original poetry, dance, live music, visual and performance art. After four years touring to over 70 different venues across the country as Production Stage Manager for Aquila, Alex transitioned into the role of Company Manager to continue her career of working with women-led artistic endeavors.