Nola Chilton (12 February 1922 – 8 October 2021) was an American-born Israeli theater director and acting teacher.

In 1960, she directed an off-off Broadway production of "Dead End," a radical play about the miserable lives of poverty-stricken young people, in which Dustin Hoffman appeared.

[2] In 1963, Chilton immigrated to Israel, settling in Kiryat Gat, then a small town in the northern Negev.

She worked briefly for the Cameri Theater but was not enamored with the Tel Aviv scene, which reminded her of what she had left behind.

[3] Chilton was the inspiration for The Open Theater, an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973 in New York City founded by her students to implement her "post-method," post-absurd acting technique through a collaborative process that explores political, artistic, and social issues.