About Iris Klein

Iris Klein teaches, coaches and directs in Los Angeles and holds workshops in Honolulu, Hawaii. She grew up in New Jersey, one suburb away from Manhattan. At five years old she watched her cousin, Jerome Robbins’ masterful, “West Side Story,” from the fifth row. At nine years old she heard Mànitas De Plata play flamenco guitar at Carnegie Hall which opened her ears to the music of the world. At twelve, Iris witnessed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton read Shakespeare, poetry, and verse to each other in a ‘by invitation only,’ intimate theatre space. These shows are where she fell in love with the theatre.

She believes exposure to the arts at an early age is essential to expand our understanding of the human condition and open our hearts to passion and compassion. She attended New College of California in San Francisco and returned to NYC where she resided for the next ten years. The decade was filled with music on Bleeker Street, broadway, off-broadway, and just off-off. Iris worked on the NYC stages and on films in Manhattan where she worked with and watched the likes of Coppola, Scorsese, Lumet, and Benton create and direct. A few of those years were spent traveling the world with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, filming documentaries up and down the Amazon River and through a vast part of the world.

Iris moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to act and performed for playwright Eugene Ionesco and his wife to packed theatres under the direction of Paul Verdier in, Ionesco’s Tales, at Stages Theatre. She was directed by John Cassavetes in his play, A Woman of Mystery, starring Gena Rowlands, Woody Harrelson and Carol Kane at the Court Theatre. Cassavetes‘ artistic fearlessness continues to inspire and shape her. TV and film credits followed. Iris directed “Conversations in Black and White,” by Pamela Galvin in off broadway’s New York City Theatre. The Kleins’ co-wrote and co-directed with indie festival winner for ‘best direction,’ indie feature; “Three Janes,” starring Gail O’Grady, Erika Alexander, Stephanie Romanov, Michael Murphy, John Glover, and Louis Ferreira and with Brian White, Boris Kojoe, Billy Brown and Rickie Lee Jones.. The independent film shot in Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. The feature won the Diamond Halo Award for Best Direction at the Angel City Film Festival in Hollywood and was honored at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina.