Blythe de Oliveira Foster (she/her) currently serves as Director of the Performance Program and Lecturer in MIT’s Theater Arts Program. Her collaborative works bridge performance, place, and community engagement.
Recent projects include: performing internationally at Centro Anidra, Italy in a site-specific iteration of Anna-Helena McLean’s A Voice Lesson; local Boston acting work as Diana Christensen in Umbrella Arts’ multimedia production of NETWORK; and here at MIT curating Brazilian guest artist Geo Britto’s workshops and artist talk on Augusto Boal & Political Theater; directing the Theater Arts Spring 2025 Production of Anne Carson’s Antigonick (a contemporary adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone); and conceiving and directing Saudades, an immersive installation, which invited audience participants to co-create a memory house with an interactive kitchen, recording booth, live samba bands, and lots of homemade orange cake!
Blythe has taught acting and voice and directed productions in the BFA and BA Programs at the University of California Santa Barbara and Salem State University. She has worked as an artist-in-residence with youth in San Francisco Bay Area public schools, taught and directed at Phillips Exeter Academy with the New Plays Ensemble, and recently taught summer workshops for QFun Theater youth from China. Passionate about supporting emerging artists, she has produced for Launch Pad New Plays (world premieres by playwrights KJ Sanchez, Yussef El Guindi, James Still), and had the joyful experience of serving as a community engagement liaison for Holcombe Waller’s Requiem Mass: A Queer Divine Rite at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, produced by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.
California acting credits include: American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Rep, Aurora Theatre, Shotgun Players, Marin Theatre Company, SF Playhouse, San Jose Rep, TheatreWorks, Word for Word, foolsFURY, PlayGround, and the Hollywood Fringe Festival. New York credits include: Classic Stage Company, The Lion Theatre, The Tank, and Repertorio Español and The Bushwick Starr with Caborca. She has also toured internationally with Word for Word Theater in France, including performing at the Théâtre de la Tour Eiffel, in Paris.
Blythe graduated from the MFA Acting Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, where she worked with Anne Bogart, Andrei Serban, Niky and Ursula Wolcz, and Kristin Linklater. She participated in advanced Linklater Voice Teacher training with Kristin Linklater, Fran Bennett, Andrea Haring and Mary Irwin in New York and on Orkney Island, and enjoyed meaningful apprenticeships with Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont, Gardzienice Theater in Poland, and workshops with Bill T. Jones in California.