Mantello, currently represented on the Great White Way by Wicked, The Odd Couple and Three Days of Rain, has not directed anything off-Broadway since 2002's A Man of No Importance. His previous MTC directing credits are Love! Valour! Compassion! which transferred from off-Broadway to Broadway and earned Mantello his first Tony Award nomination for direction Blue Window, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks and Corpus Christi. Mantello, who started his career as an actor, received Tony Awards for directing the play Take Me Out and the musical Assassins.
Blackbird is scheduled to officially open off-Broadway on April 10, 2007.