Suli Holum co-founded the Pig Iron Theatre Company where she was a co-Artistic Director and Head of Education and Outreach from 1996-2001, then company member from 2001-2006. Her work with Pig Iron encompassed many roles onstage and off. She co-wrote and performed The Odyssey, Dig or Fly, and The Snow Queen (produced by the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia). She received a Barrymore Award for Choreography for Cafeteria, and was nominated for her choreography in The Tragedy of Joan of Arc. She wrote Gentlemen Volunteers, nominated for a Barrymore for Best New Play and subsequently toured around the world. She co-created and performed Anodyne, a site-specific journey inspired by Jerzy Kozinski’s The Painted Bird. She also co-created and performed in Shut Eye with legendary theatre director Joseph Chaikin.

As a recipient of the Shell Fellowship in Drama from the National Institute of Education in Singapore Ms. Holum traveled to Singapore to perform her solo work, The Lollipop Project, and to lead workshops on the development and performance of new work to students at the NIE. She subsequently received an Individual Artist Grant from the Independence Foundation to produce the work at the Walnut Street Theatre, Studio Three and was presented by Pendragon Theatre, Goddard College, and at the Flea Theater in New York City.

After relocating from Philadelphia to New York in 2001, she began developing new works of physical theater with The Talking Band and The Theater of the Two-Headed Calf, both in residence at La Mama, ETC, and participating in new play development through workshops and readings at New Dramatists, Naked Angels, and Ars Nova. She performs in New York and regionally, including the New York premiere of Paula Vogel’s Hot ‘n’ Throbbing at the Signature Theatre andBorn Yesterday at Arena Stage which earned her a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress.  She received a Drama Desk Award as part of the ensemble of Israel Horowitz’s Lebensraum.  She was the director and dramaturge of Leigh Garret’s solo work Lunacy Cycles presented by Dance New Amsterdam. She also designed workshops for performers of Hipgnosis Theatre in preparation for their staging of Measure for Measure as well as for the Elastic Theatre’s original piece Bitch on Wheels.  She is co-writing and directing The Elastic Theatre’s The Word to be presented by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in 2007.

Holum graduated from the Baltimore School for the Arts and Swarthmore College with a BA in Theatre Studies, Phi Beta Kappa. Her eclectic training includes neutral mask, commedia mask, clown, mime, dance, Viewpoints with Mary Overlie, classical text analysis and performance, and voice and speech. She has taught at The University of the Arts, as a resident teaching artist at People’s Light and Theatre, with Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival, at Goddard College, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Lincoln Center and the Public Theatre in New York City.