JOSH SOBEL is a queer, neurodistinct and decorated development professional/dramaturg, producer, director and educator, with a passion for heightened realities, poetic expression and the celebration of the Event. Originally from Rochester, NY, he spent 10 years working in Chicago, during which time he served as Artistic Director of Haven Chicago and was formerly Literary Manager for Strawdog Theatre Company and New Leaf Theatre, as well as Associate Director of the National Theater Institute summer "Theatermakers" program at the renowned Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. He relocated to Los Angeles and received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2022, and is the founder and CEO of FutureHome, a multimedia multi-disciplinary development and production incubator, a haven for forward-looking creatives seeking to leave the world more hopeful than they found it.
Recent projects include Broadway's Gutenberg! The Musical! feat. Josh Gad and Andrew Rannels (Co-Producer), Appropriate feat. Sarah Paulson (Co-Producer) and The Wiz feat. Wayne Brady (Investor); the world premiere of Brushstroke, a new Cold War comic thriller by Big Bang Theory's John Ross Bowie and starring James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer) and Malcolm Barrett (Average Joe); multiple short films selected for Oscar-qualifying and historice film festivals including HollyShorts, Portland Film Festival, Out on Film, Reeling LGBTQ+ Film Festival and Dances With Films; GOON, a pilot proof-of-concept heist short; and Godvein, a culinary-infused immersive fantasy experience drawing inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons. His work as both producer and director of theatre and live experiences has also been named Best of the Year in the Chicago Tribune, Time Out, Washington Post, Newcity Stage and others, garnering numerous awards and nominations.
An alumnus of the Orchard Project's KJCG Leadership Intensive, Josh was named one of Newcity’s “Players 2019: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago”, and his productions have sold out at Steppenwolf Theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe, where a recent project - Sarah Albritton's solo performance Awake & Narcoleptic - was a Playbill Pick from Editor-in-Chief of Playbill Diep Tran. Upcoming work includes an immersive, puppet- and clown-filled adaptation of Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark staged in a popular coffee shop, a queer dual language Bengali-English short film about coming out and generational divides, and The Femininity Project, a "docu-mythologia" about fear of the feminine within masculine culture and identity.
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Josh is the recipient of a 2012-2013 SDC Observership from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation on HAMLET at Writer’s Theatre, directed by Michael Halberstam.
Associate Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
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Alumnus, O'Neill National Theater Institute.
BA in Theatre with Honors in Directing, Oberlin College.
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MFA in Directing, California Institute of the Arts.