With composer Cormac Bluestone, her longtime collaborator, Anya wrote a critically acclaimed operetta adapted from Marjorie Williams Bianco’s classic story The Velveteen Rabbit, which premiered at Atlantic Theater Company, played to sold out houses, and received an Off-Broadway Alliance Award nomination for Best Family Show. Anya and Cormac have collaborated on the music for eleven productions, with a focus on music played live by the cast. Original music from their Shakespeare and Brecht productions has been performed around the US and in Turkey, Russia, Australia and Korea.

Also for Atlantic Theater Company Anya has directed new works by Tom Donaghy, Kate Robin, Jerome Hairston, Mike Dowling and Scott Organ for the 10×25 Play Festival, the New Works Series and the 24-Hour Plays, directing actors such as Liev Schrieber, Mary Steenburgen, Eddie Cahill and Jason Ritter. She has directed numerous Atlantic Conservatory productions on the Atlantic Stage 2, including Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, Pericles: Prince of Tyre, Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill, and Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker.

Anya was the co-director and story editor of It Makes a Sound, a serial fiction podcast on the Night Vale Presents network written by and starring Jacquelyn Landgraf, which enjoyed a listenership of more than half a million people worldwide. She has served as Artistic Associate at Classic Stage Company, and was a regular contributor on Shakespeare topics for National Public Radio’s The Takeaway.

Anya has been on the faculty at Atlantic Theater Acting School since 1998. She is a Master Teacher of Practical Aesthetics, an acting technique originally developed by William H. Macy and David Mamet, based on the teachings of Stanislavsky, Joseph Campbell and Aristotle. At Atlantic, Anya teaches Advanced Scene Study classes in Chekhov, Shakespeare, Throughline Technique, and Postwar British Drama, a class she developed based on her interest in Brecht’s legacy and the political theater movement that emerged in Britain in the wake of WWII. Anya served for many years on the faculty at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and taught the plays of Anton Chekhov to the B.F.A. acting students at the Brooklyn College Acting Conservatory. She has several times been a guest artist at Harvard University’s Graduate Center for Advanced Theater Training- delivering the commencement address to the graduating M.F.A. actors in 2015- and served as master acting teacher to the M.F.A. acting students at Penn State Graduate Theater Program. Anya has taught master classes in Practical Aesthetics, Shakespeare, and the plays of Anton Chekhov to professional actors in Melbourne, Australia, ongoingly at The Elysian Theater in Los Angeles, and at Teatro Foro 37 in Mexico City, where she has worked recurringly since 2018.

Anya has been an acting coach for 20 years, working on Broadway, off-Broadway, film and television, with actors such as Zach Woods, Felicity Huffman, Sam Nivola, Jarod Spector, and many others.

Anya received her B.F.A. from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, and her Master of Arts degree in Shakespeare from The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon, in affiliation with the Royal Shakespeare Company and University of Birmingham, UK. 

Anya was the 2025 winner of the Sir Stanley Wells Prize for Shakespeare scholarship from The Shakespeare Institute, UK, for her writing on Anton Chekhov’s use of Hamlet in formulating his positive vision of the meaning of life: ‘More Things in Heaven and Earth’: Hamlet and the Secular Gospel of Anton Chekhov.