Salvatore Mannino is an independent theater director and creative producer with over twenty of professional experience. Mannino has collaborated with a variety of companies in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans and other cities around the country. In addition to directing and producing for live performance, Mannino is also a co-founder of NightLight Labs, a Los Angeles based interactive media company specializing in technology-driven storytelling.
As a freelance director, Mannino has directed with companies like Le Petit Theatre, New Orleans Shakespeare Company, and the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. His recent directing credits include Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Jack Thorne's stage adaptation of John Ajvide Lunqvist's novel Let The Right One In, the relatively unknown Tennessee Williams play Spring Storm, and the Simon Stephens adaptation of the Mark Haddon novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
With NightLight Labs, Salvatore serves as the Producing Director where he oversees the day-to-day operations of the company. NightLight develops adventures that aim to challenge the status quo of how audiences absorb and interact with storytelling. The company’s original project, The Dial, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Other clients include The Metropolitan Opera, Porsche, Human Rights Foundation, NOAA, Pride, Mousetrappe, RYOT, Invertigo Dance Theatre, and Andrew Bird.
Prior to forming NightLight Labs, Mannino served as a producing associate with Mara Isaacs' Octopus Theatricals where he collaborated on the Broadway hit Hadestown, Signature Theatre’s presentation of Theatre For One in addition to US tours for Phantom Limb Company, Hungary’s Bela Pinter and Company and Poland’s Song of the Goat.
Salvatore has also collaborated with the Center for New Performance where he served as an associate producer for Fantomas: Revenge of the Image which premiered at the Wuhzen Theatre Festival in China and the premiere of Lars Jan’s The Institute of Memory (TIMe) at REDCAT in Los Angeles. In 2011, Salvatore founded the Rebirth Theatre Company in New York where he produced new theater at Pier 17 of the Seaport District. In New York, he collaborated with companies such as Theatre for the New City, Workshop Theatre Company, and the Algonquin Theater Company in addition to INTAR Theatre's HPRL Program, and training with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company. He also worked regionally as a performer throughout the U.S.
Mannino, a 2024 alum of the Director's Lab West, currently teaches with the Department of Theatre Arts & Dance at Loyola University New Orleans where he serves as the Artistic Director and Professor of Practice. He has also taught at CalArts, and served as a guest lecturer at University of Colorado - Boulder, and the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. Salvatore earned his MFA in Creative Producing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2017, and his BA in Theatre from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2007.