Directing
Along with directing for the theatre, Nell works extensively as a consultant on the development of new works. From one-person plays to large-scale musicals and screenplays, she collaborates with writers and composers, helping them to discover and shape their pieces along the road to fully realized productions.
She directed and developed 2 plays with Katharine Heller for the New York International Fringe Festival: My Dad's Crazier Than Your Dad and The Boy In The Basement for which Nell received the festival's Outstanding Direction award in 2008.
With Tony Nominated composer/lyricist Paul Gordon she has developed several musicals including Jane Eyre,The Front (based on the 1976 film written by Walter Bernstein and starring Woody Allen), and DEATH: The Musical, which has a pop score and a fresh, irreverent take on the inevitable.
Other productions include Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw and Too Much Candy for the Brooklyn-based Brave New World Theatre Company, and Lips Together, Teeth Apart by Terrence McNally for the Wingspan Arts Program.
As director or associate director, Nell has worked in NYC on and off- Broadway, in regional theatres all across the country, and internationally in Japan and South Korea where she most recently mounted John Caird's production of Daddy Long Legs.
Acting
Nell began her professional theatre career as an actor with credits including summer stock in Maine, Off-off Broadway experimental works with Anne Bogart, and 9 wonderful months playing Chava in Fiddler on the Roof at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre.
She was a founding ensemble member of LA's critically acclaimed Strike Theatre and spent the better part of a decade splitting her time between California and New York where she appeared in such productions as
Kindertransport (Manhattan Theatre Club), The Crucible and
A Little Hotel on the Side (Broadway) and the 2000 Tony Award® nominee for Best Musical, Jane Eyre.
Film and TV credits include "Better Things", "Bull",
"The Sopranos", "Law and Order", and the Indie films
"I Love You Don't Touch Me" and "Amy's Orgasm".
She appeared in The Exonerated (Off-Broadway and Nat'l Tour), has worked regionally at the La Jolla Playhouse, Sierra Repertory and San Diego Rep, played The Royal Alexandra in Toronto, and has also voiced many characters(as Karen Neill) in the animated worlds of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and One Piece among others.
Nell currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.