Board of Directors Episode 10: Brian Kulick
Brian Kulick is a director, writer, producer, educator, and current Chair of the Graduate Theatre Program at Columbia University. He has been the Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company, where he directed Galileo with F. Murray Abraham, The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin, and The Forest with Dianne Wiest. He commissioned and co-directed poet Anne Carson's award-winning An Oresteia, collaborated with composer Duncan Sheik on productions of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, Man’s A Man, and Mother Courage, and produced CSC's much lauded Chekhov Cycle (Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard) with Alan Cumming, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Joley Richardson, Peter Sarsgaard, John Turturro and Dianne Weist. He initiated CSC’s Music Theatre Initiative and produced revivals of Stephen Sondheim’s Passion and Pacific Overtures. He also made CSC the home for playwright David Ives, whose Venus in Fur transferred to Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award for best play.
Before this, he was an Artistic Associate and then Associate Producer for the Public Theatre, where he directed the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s adaptation of A Dybbuk, as well as acclaimed productions of Twelfth Night, Winter’s Tale, and Timon of Athens at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Other notable works include: The premieres of Tony Kushner’s The Illusion (New York Theatre Workshop), Kathleen Tolan’s The Wax (Playwrights’ Horizon), and Nilo Cruz’s Two Sisters and a Piano (The McCarter Theatre). His work has also been seen at The Mark Taper Forum, San Diego's Old Globe, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre, The Magic Theatre, and Trinity Repertory Theatre, where he served as Associate Artistic Director. His work in opera and music theatre includes productions of Carmen, Pelleas and Melisandre, A Soldier’s Tale, The Anatole Cycle, and The Guilty Mother (all for Long Beach Opera), and a remounting of Gordon Davidson’s production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Los Angeles Opera).
He is the author of Staging Shakespeare (Methuen), How Greek Theatre Works, The Elements of Theatrical Expression, and The Secret Life of Theatre (all for Routledge). His most recent book, Staging the End of the World: Theatre in a Time of Climate Crisis, has just been released by Methuen.
