Shellen Lubin works professionally as a Director/Dramaturg, Playwright, Actor, Songwriter/Singer, and Arts Activist and Advocate. She is a member of the Playwright/Directors Workshop of The Actors Studio, and is best known for her her reflections on life as an artist and living with artistry which have been featured in five cover pieces for Back Stage Publications (archived on her website), are read weekly in her Monday Morning Quotes think-pieces, and heard as part of the Village Yontif Shabbat and High Holiday services (she is the resident philosopher/poet/storyteller for the group, periodically also appearing in that capacity at Brotherhood Synagogue). She also produced a 3-day festival of Untold Stories of Jewish Women at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2018.
Shellen and her songs have been featured on radio, cable TV, in cabaret, and online; in a one-hour special on WBAI-FM, Shellen Lubin - Songwriter/Singer; and in Milos Forman’s first American film, Taking Off.
As a director/dramaturg, Lubin is currently working on developing projects with Lanie Robertson, Pamela Grayson, Stuart Warmflash, Stephanie Satie, and When Zaydeh Danced On Eldridge Street from the award-winning book by Elsa Okon Rael with composer Matthew Gandolfo (and Lubin’s lyrics), which she directed Fall ‘22 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She and Gandolfo have collaborated on a few projects, including Susan Merson's play Between Pretty Places, for which Lubin wrote songs and which Gandolfo orchestrated; she directed productions of this piece at Here Arts Center in NY and at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, CA. She and Gandolfo are continuing to work on a musical that they started developing with Rael before her death in 2020, On Delancey Street, based on Rael’s book What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street.
Other plays and musicals of Lubin’s have been produced and workshopped at Manhattan Class Company, Public Theatre, Theater Breaking Through Barriers, Cosmic Orchid, Pacific Resident Theatre, Hubbard Hall, West Coast Ensemble. Her first musical in New York City, Molly’s Daughters, was commissioned by the American Jewish Theatre. Her play The Quality of Respect is a re-telling of the stories that make up The Merchant of Venice, with a very different ending.
She has played numerous roles off off Broadway, in workshops and readings, and for other forms of development. She played a principal role (that was essentially cut) in the film Green Card.