Will Detlefsen

Office: TBA
(408) 924- 
will.detlefsen@sjsu.edu

Will Detlefsen (he/him) is so excited to be a part of the faculty at San Jose State University. Will recently returned to the Bay Area where he was born and raised after spending the last 15 years living in New York City. Will received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where he trained as an interdisciplinary artist at Playwrights Horizons Theater and received his Masters in Directing from UC San Diego. 

Recent directing credits include Spring Awakening(Pace University), Edit Annie by Mary Glen Fredrick (world premiere at The Vortex in Austin, TX), Our Town (NYU), Pippin (Five Towns College), and The Straights by T. Adamson (world premiere at JACK, NY). Previous productions include Machinalia by Steph Del Rosso (Oakland Theater Project, JACK), Vieux Carré, Rhinoceros, and Young Jean Lee’s Lear (UC San Diego).

Will was the associate director on the world premiere musicals Up Here (La Jolla Playhouse) and Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (La Jolla Playhouse) as well as Angels in America (Berkeley Rep), To My Girls (Second Stage Theater), Orpheus Descending (Theatre for a New Audience), Cambodian Rock Band (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and The Pain of My Belligerence (Playwrights Horizons). 

Will has been teaching Directing for the past five years at National Theater Institute at the O’Neill Theater Center as well as teaching Acting and Directing at Muhlenberg College and UC San Diego. Will currently lives in Berkeley with his husband, dog, and beautiful daughter, Ocean.