Elisha serves as resident stage director for Rockland Opera and has produced and directed over forty productions with the company, including such masterpieces of the standard repertoire as Rossini's Il Barbiere di Seviglia, La Scala di Seta, La Cambiale di Matrimonio and Il Signor Bruschino; Verdi's Otello; Puccini's Tosca, Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica; Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio and Bastien and Bastienne; Haydn's Lo Speziale; Menotti's The Medium and The Telephone; Brecht/Weill's Threepenny Opera; Offenbach's Les Bavards; Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana; Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci; Donizetti's Don Pasquale; Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona; Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience; Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel; and Bernstein's Trouble In Tahiti.

In addition, she conceived, scripted and directed a myriad small-scale operatic productions of biographical nature such as Portrait of Puccini: a life in music; Heroes and Villains; Only Mozart; Rossini at 200; Donizetti, Genius of Belcanto; Shakespeare in Opera; and Maxwell Anderson In His Own Words (created for the “Maxwell Anderson Centennial Celebration”) among others.

She has written extensively and her works were produced by experimental New York City based theatre companies such as La Mama Etc., Theater for the New City, WPA and Re-Cher-Chez Studio for Avant-garde Art. Double Helix, an original play elaborating the inescapability of heredity, won her the Artists’ Fellowship Award in Playwriting/Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts. It’s All in Your Mind, a theatre piece dealing with memory and the power it exerts over human behavior, was developed with a support grant from the Jerome Foundation. Her adaptation of the play, A Certain Quiet, serves as libretto for an opera composed with support grants from New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional awards include the John Golden Fund and the Madolin Cervantes Award.

For two consecutive seasons (during the 70s) she co-translated and directed for the Festival of New Italian Plays, produced in New York by ETI – Ente Teatrale Italiano. She served as Artistic Director/Producer for the BJE (Board of Jewish Education) Intergenerational Theatre where she conceived, produced and directed theme-specific musical productions, collaborating closely with book writers, lyricists and composers.

Elisha served on the faculties of the Performing Arts Department at SUNY Rockland, Hunter College- CUNY; Yeshiva University-Stern College for Women; and was Guest Director at the Marymount College, Tarrytown, NY; Artist-in-Residence at University of Maine, Orono and Guest Lecturer at West Point Military Academy.

She trained at the School of Stage Art, Haifa, Israel, with Michael Chekhov’s disciple - Canadian director Peter Frye, and in 1960 came to New York to study with Stella Adler at the Stella Adler Theatre Studio and attend Lee and Paula Strasberg’s private classes. She was invited to the Actors Studio and later, prompted by her producer Cheryl Crawford, joined the Studio’s Director’s Unit. Exponentially, she moved to the experimental theatre and embraced the methods of the likes of Viola Spolin and Jerzy Grotowski. Her work, be it writing, directing or teaching has been profoundly influenced by these great masters of the theatre. Professional affiliations include: Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, The Dramatists Guild, and League of Professional Theatre Women.

Rina Elisha is married and has two sons.