Elena is a video artist, scenographer, technologist, and lecturer who has worked in theater, dance, and performance. 

Elena Tilli is born and raised in Florence, Italy. She trained and completed her studies at Yale School of Drama in Connecticut (US) in 2019. There, she studied Technical Design and Production, and Video Design for theater. She earned her first master’s degree in mechanical engineering in Florence in 2010. After returning to Europe, she attended the program Technique of Scenic Representation held by Claudia Castellucci at the Scuola Conia Raffaello Sanzio, in Cesena.

Her approach explores the use of technologies like PTZ cameras, live feeding, and film on stage. Her interest in technology, software, and archives are only some of the elements she brings to the stage.

Since 2018, Elena has been working as a freelance video and media designer in theater in Europe and in the US.

In 2025 she designed video for the opera Thumbprint by Kamala Sankaram, directed by Katharina Kastening and premiered at Wuppertal Opernhaus. She also directed video in the live performance MEMORY, SPEAKS! in December at Akademie Der Künste, Berlin.
In 2024, she designed video in Fremd, premiered at Theater Im Depot, Dortmund. 
In 2023 she designed stage and directed the short piece Coded Rituals. The performance was presented in the Festival Beyond Gravity in 2023 co-produced by Theater Im Depot.
In 2022 she was part of Digital Body Archive residency at Lake Studios Berlin and of the project Togather with the VR installation Unlearning Journey into a Virtual Body. The project was funded by the NRW International visitor program and presented at Favoriten Festival 2022 – Unlearning for Possible Futures.

Her work has been seen internationally at The Kitchen Theater in New York, where she designed the stage and video for The Sasquatch Rituals by Sybil Kempton in 2018, and in Lisbon in the play Nomadas, at the Obando Theater, project supported by the European project PlayOn. 

In 2021, Elena became a research fellow at the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität in Dortmund with the project Lilith, a research project about AI-assisted theater design. She returns regularly with short residencies to research the intersection of digitality and performance. 

Since 2025, Elena has been a regular lecturer at the Fachhochschule Dortmund, University of Applied Sciences, in the Master’s program Theater und Digitalität, where she teaches the courses Crafting the Media and Welcome to the real world. 

Elena collaborates regularly with video artists like Benjamin Krieg and Guillaume Callieux. With them she worked in the productions Draußen vor der Tür, in Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Heimsuchung und Haus zur Sonne in Schauspiel Hannover as well as Das Mädchen aus der Streichholzfabrik in Schauspiel Karlsruhe, and Der Blinde Passagier in Volkstheater München.

Elena also works as a director. Works include Codes of Absence premiered in Berlin at Vierte Welt (2024) and Theater Im Depot, Dortmund (2023), co-directed with Kai Tuchmann.

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