Rachel Rockwell

Rachel Rockwell, born Natalie Rachel Heyde on July 14, 1969, in Columbia, Missouri, was an American theater director, choreographer, and performer who appeared on Broadway between 1996 and 2001. Her father, Gary Heyde, known professionally as Austin Gary, worked as a songwriter and teacher, and her mother, Glory (Kissel) Heyde, was an actress and teacher. Her brother, Jeremy Spencer (Heyde), served as the drummer for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Rockwell began studying dance at age seven under Ricki Smith Newman, Sylvia Watters, and the Evansville Dance Theater in Evansville, Indiana. At thirteen, she earned a scholarship to study ballet at the National Academy of Arts in Champaign, Illinois. In 1993, while enrolled at the University of Southern Indiana, she directed her first musical, Tintypes, at the New Harmony Theater in New Harmony, Indiana. Following college, she relocated to Chicago.

Her Broadway credits included Mamma Mia! and Show Boat, the latter a production directed by Harold Prince. She also performed in national tours of both productions. In 2001, she received a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Best Actress in a review for And The World Goes 'Round, and in 2004 earned a Jeff nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a musical for The Pajama Game.

From the mid-1990s onward, Rockwell directed and choreographed productions at numerous Chicago-area theaters, among them Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook, Marriott Theatre Lincolnshire, Paramount Theatre, Noble Fool Theatricals, Fox Valley Repertory, Apple Tree, The Little Theatre on the Square, SIU Summer Theatre, and McCleod Summer Playhouse. In 2010, Chicago Magazine named her Best Director.

Her choreography earned Jeff Award nominations for The King & I in 2007 and A Chorus Line in 2011. As a director, she received Jeff nominations for Miss Saigon and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, both in 2009, followed by nominations for Ragtime in 2010 and 42nd Street in 2011. Her Drury Lane Oakbrook production of Ragtime garnered eleven Jeff nominations and seven awards, including the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Director of a Musical. In 2012, she received Jeff nominations for Best Director and Best Musical for both The Sound of Music and Sweeney Todd at Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre, as well as a Best Play nomination for Enron at Timeline Theatre Company, where she had directed the regional premiere of that production.

In 2013, her production of Oliver! received a Jeff nomination for Best Musical. The following year, she directed and choreographed a revival of Brigadoon at the Goodman Theatre, the first major revival of the show in two decades. Working with Brian Hill and with permission from the Lerner and Loewe estates, she updated the book for that production. Brigadoon received Jeff nominations for Director, Choreography, and Best Musical, ultimately winning Best Musical and Best Choreographer. Also in 2014, she received Jeff nominations for Les Misérables at Drury Lane Oakbrook. She won the Jeff Award for Best Choreography for Billy Eliot in 2015, and that same year her productions of Billy Eliot and Ride the Cyclone were named among the top ten productions in Chicago. In 2016, she won the Jeff Award for Best Director for Ride the Cyclone at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Her U.S. premiere production of Ride the Cyclone subsequently transferred off-Broadway to MCC Theater, where it was named Best of 2016 by the New York Times and received five Lucille Lortel Award nominations and a Drama League nomination in 2017.

Rockwell also directed children's theater productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, including the premieres of The Emperor's New Clothes in 2010, The Adventures of Pinocchio in 2011, and Short Shakespeare! The Taming of the Shrew in 2012, for which she also served as adapter. She directed Disney's Beauty & The Beast at the same venue in 2012 and Shrek in 2013. At Chicago Shakespeare Theater she additionally choreographed The Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet, and Measure For Measure. In April 2016, she directed the world premiere of Diary of a Wimpy Kid at Minneapolis Children's Theatre.

Rockwell was married to Broadway sound designer Garth Helm, with whom she had a son. She died on May 28, 2018, of ovarian cancer, at the age of forty-eight.