Meet Our Team

Niegel Smith

Niegel (he/him) is a Bessie Award winning theater director and performance artist. He is the Artistic Director of NYC’s Obie Award winning theater, The Flea guiding the organization through its refounding as a hub for experimental art by Black, brown and queer artists. He is also a board member of A.R.T./New York and was a ringleader of Willing Participant, an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens.

He was recently sainted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for his contributions to queer artistry and community, and his current directing projects include The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist, a multi-media opera and community ritual for Eric and Erica Garner, The Bark of Millions - Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s rock opera celebrating queer icons throughout all of human history, and The Great Thirst - Justin Tranter’s post-apocalyptic alt-pop musical about a family trying to do more than survive a very thirsty new world. His theater work has been produced at The Alley Theater, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Barbican, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Flea, The Goodman Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, The Invisible Dog, Lincoln Center, Luna Stage, The Melbourne Festival, Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood, the National Black Theatre, New York Fringe Festival, New York Live Arts, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Playwrights Horizons, Pomegranate Arts, The Public Theater, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Summer Play Festival, The Sydney Opera House, and Under the Radar, and his participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, The Flea, The Invisible Dog, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. He often collaborates with playwright/performer Taylor Mac.

Niegel recently directed the wildly popular and critically-acclaimed jazz opera The Hang. For this work, he was nominated for a Drama League Award in best direction. He has also collaborated with some of the world’s most celebrated musicians including En Vogue and Jon Batiste at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. Smith is co-director of the critically acclaimed ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’, winner of the Kennedy Prize in Drama, Bessie Award, the Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He associate directed the Tony Award winning musical FELA! – restaging that production in London, Lagos and its world tour, and he assistant directed the original Broadway and off-Broadway productions of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change. He has worked on the artistic staffs of The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company and Providence Black Rep.

Contact Niegel at niegels@theflea.org.

Annika Rosenvinge

Annika (they/them) has coordinated box office for The Flea productions of Arden, HANG TIME, “The Worthy,” “WERK! The Patio Sessions,” and BATHHOUSE.PPTX, and served as the Venue Host Manager at The Flea since 2022. They’ve worked as a theater teacher, front of house manager, administrator, and in other various artistic capacities at Gloucester Stage Company, Boston Film Festival, the american vicarious, Pitch Black Productions, and Second Stage Theater.