Her parents met while her father, a New York television producer, was stationed in Japan after World War II.
[2] In 1988, she graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
[10] In collaboration with Weiner, Paulus co-created The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream which ran off-Broadway from 1999 to 2005.
The American Repertory Theater chose Paulus after Anna D. Shapiro, the August: Osage County director, decided not to take the job to replace Robert Woodruff.
[15] Also in 2010, Paulus directed Il mondo della luna (The World on the Moon), an opera by Joseph Haydn, in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.
[17] In 2011 she staged a production of the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater, which moved to Broadway in 2012.
[18] In advance of this production, renowned composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim expressed his dismay on her proposed edits and directorial choices in a letter to The New York Times.
[23] At the American Repertory Theater, Michael McGrath replaced Bart as Charles Frohman, a role played on Broadway by Kelsey Grammer.
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel was announced to write the book of the musical, but left the project.
[citation needed] In 2018, Paulus directed the new musical Jagged Little Pill, based on the Grammy Award-winning 1995 album by Alanis Morissette.
[citation needed] In 2020, Griffin Matthews spoke out on his racism-laden experience during the production of his musical Invisible Thread directed by Paulus at Second Stage in 2015, which ran the previous year at the A.R.T.
[citation needed] On November 19, 2021, Paulus was hired by Spire Animation Studios to make her feature directorial debut Century Goddess from a screenplay by Bisha K. Ali and Starrah writing original songs.
On June 1, 2020, he said on Twitter: The thing about [Broadway] Amy Cooper is, she is a liberal, she is an artistic director, she is a Tony winner, she is a producer, she teaches at Harvard, she is charismatic, she is an excellent public speaker and fundraiser, she puts on pretty dresses and speaks eloquently about how much she cares about diversity and inclusion.
's diverse production of 1776, which Paulus co-directed, was the subject of criticism by cast member Sara Porkalob after it moved to Broadway in 2022.