ROBERT BRUSTEINFounding Director
Robert Brustein is a former Professor of English at Harvard University (now Senior Research Fellow), the drama critic for The New Republic, and a past Dean of the Yale Drama School. He was the founding director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre and served for 20 years as Director of the Loeb Drama Center where he founded the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. He retired from the Artistic Directorship in 2002 and now serves as Founding Director and Creative Consultant. He is presently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University, and is currently a regular blogger for the Huggington Post and the Open University. Theatre critic for The New Republic since 1959, Robert Brustein is the author of 14 books on theatre and society including Reimagining American Theatre, The Third Theatre, Revolution as Theatre, The Theatre of Revolt, Making Scenes (a memoir of his Yale years), Who Needs Theatre (a collection of reviews and essays), Dumbocracy in America and Cultural Calisthenics. His collection The Siege of the Arts was released in 2001. His book, Letters to a Young Actor: A Universal Guide to Performance was published early in 2005. His latest book, Millennial Stages, was published in 2006. He has supervised well over 200 productions, acting in eight and directing twelve, including his own adaptations of The Father, Ghosts, The Changeling and the trilogy of Pirandello works: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Right You Are (If You Think You Are) and Tonight We Improvise. His Six Characters in Search of an Author won the Boston Theatre Award for Best Production of 1996. He has written eleven adaptations for the American Repertory Theatre, including Shlemiel the First, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, When We Dead Awaken (directed by Robert Wilson), Three Farces and a Funeral, Enrico IV), and his final production at the ART, Lysistrata. His full-length plays include Demons; Nobody Dies on Friday; The Face Lift; Spring Forward, Fall Back; and The English Channel. Demons, which was broadcast on WGBH radio in 1993, had its stage world premiere as part of the American Repertory Theatre New Stages Season. Nobody Dies on Friday was given its world premiere in the same series and was presented at the Singapore Festival of Arts and the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow, and was included in Best Plays of 1999. Spring Forward, Fall Back was produced in 2006 at the Vineyard Playhouse and at Theatre J in Washington. The English Channel was given its first reading by the Shakespeare Society at the Players Club in May, followed by readings at the Vineyard Playhouse and the Resonance Ensemble at the Samuel Beckett Theatre. It is being produced in Boston and at the Vineyard Playhouse in the Fall of 2007. His short plays Poker Face, Chekhov on Ice, Divestiture, AnchorBimbo, Noises, Terrorist Skit, Airport Hell, Beachman’s Last Poetry Reading, and Enter William Shakespeare were all presented by the Boston Playwrights Theatre. Over the course of his long career as director, playwright, and teacher, he has participated in the artistic development of such theatre artists as Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Ted Talley, Michael Feingold, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, Mark Linn-Baker, Henry Winkler, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Tommy Derrah, Rocco Landesman, Linda Lavin, Michael Yearga, William Ivey Long, Derek Maclane, Steve Zahn, Peter Sellars, Santo Loquasto, Tom Moore, Albert Innaurato , and many others Mr Brustein is the recipient of many coveted awards including: Mr. Brustein has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was recently inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. In 2003 he served as a Senior Fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and in 2004 and 2005 was a senior fellow at the NEA Arts Journalism Institute at the University of Southern California.
photo by Bachrach |
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