Diane Marie Paulus (born 1966) is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of Hair and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and won the award in 2013 for her revival of Pippin. She received the 2009 Harvard College Women's Leadership Award and the Columbia University IAL Diamond Award. She was selected for the 2014 Time 100, Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world; as one of Variety "Trailblazing Women in Entertainment for 2014"; Boston magazine's "50 Thought Leaders of 2014"; and Boston magazine's 2018 and 2020 "100 Most Influential People in Boston". Early life and education Paulus was born in New York City in 1966, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father. Her parents met while her father, a New York television producer, was stationed in Japan after World War II. She attended the Brearley School, studied dance at New York City Ballet, and trained in classical piano. In 1988, she graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She then earned a master's degree from the Columbia University School of the Arts. Career Paulus and her husband, Randy Weiner, along with a few other theater school graduates established a small theater troupe in New York City called Project 400 Theatre Group. With Project 400, Paulus and Weiner specialized in creating avant-garde musical productions which married classic theater and modern music. Paulus's first production with the group was a rock version of The Tempest. Other productions included an R&B Phaedra and a hip-hop Lohengrin. In collaboration with Weiner, Paulus co-created The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream which ran off-Broadway from 1999 to 2005. Critics cited the production as an example of a trend in which edgy avant-garde theater had become fashionably mainstream. In May 2008, Paulus was named the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater (affiliated with Harvard University). The American Repertory Theater chose Paulus after Anna D. Shapiro, the August: Osage County director, decided not to take the job to replace Robert Woodruff. Paulus's first production was a revival of The Donkey Show, written by