Download ETHAN MCSWEENY/bio

ETHAN MCSWEENY/bio
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Ethan McSweeny is an internationally acclaimed director based in New York City. Hailed in
his youth as a “wunderkind with a Midas touch” by American Theatre magazine, his twenty-year
career has been distinguished by a remarkable range of work and breadth of achievement on most
of the preëminent stages of North America.
Mr. McSweeny made his breakout New York debut with the electrifying Off-Broadway
premiere of John Logan’s Leopold and Loeb thriller Never the Sinner, winning Outer Critics Circle
and Drama Desk Awards in 1997. Three years later, he made his Broadway debut with a revival of
Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, which was recognized with a Tony Award nomination, and the Drama
Desk and Outer Critic Circle Awards for Best Revival. A regular on the New York stage, his work
there includes the Broadway premiere of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, a landmark adaptation of
Aeschylus’ The Persians for Tony Randall’s National Actor’s Theatre, and the world premieres of Rx
(Primary Stages), 100 Saints You Should Know (Playwrights Horizons) and 1001 (Page 73) – the
latter two of which were simultaneously named “Top Ten of ‘07” by TimeOut and Entertainment
Weekly magazines.
Internationally, McSweeny’s work includes two seasons at the celebrated Stratford Festival
in Canada where he directed audience-favorite productions of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons
Dangereuses and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. In 2013, he made his Irish debut
with A Streetcar Named Desire at the Gate Theatre in a staging cited as “one of the highlights, if
not the most spectacular play, of this year’s theatre season in Dublin” that confirmed
“McSweeny’s reputation as one of theatre’s brightest stars.” Streetcar was honored with a brace
of Irish Times nominations, receiving awards for Best Director, Best Leading Actress (Lia Williams)
and Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Walker). In 2014 he returned to the Gate with a
production of Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and in the summer of 2015 he will direct Brian Friel’s
adaptation of Turgenev’s A Month In the Country for the company.
Highly-regarded as a “classical imagist,” McSweeny has helmed important revivals of
Shakespeare, Shaw, Miller, Williams, Wilde, Chekhov, Albee, Pinter, Euripides, and Aeschylus.
Equally at home with new work and musicals, his vibrant freelance career has seen him direct
nearly seventy productions at many of the major institutional theatres of the United States
including the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the Goodman in Chicago, the Old Globe in San
Diego, the Denver Center in Colorado, the Alley and Dallas Theater Center in Texas, South Coast
Rep in Southern California, Center Stage in Baltimore, the Wilma in Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh
Public, Westport Playhouse in Connecticut, and both the Arena Stage and the Shakespeare
Theater Company in Washington, DC. His work around the country has been recognized with
multiple local nominations and awards including Helen Hayes, Jefferson, Barrymore, San Diego
Critics Circle, Ovation, OCIE, Star-Tribune, and many other “Best Of” recognitions and citations.
Long involved in the administration of arts institutions, Mr. McSweeny served as the
Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Theatre Company from 2004 to 2011 and continues a strong
affiliation with the company as its Resident Director. Under his leadership, CTC experienced a
remarkable growth in artistry, audiences (up over 300%), and national recognition as a vital center
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for the cultivation of the finest emerging theatre artists in the country and the development of
exciting and relevant new work for the stage. Among his proudest accomplishments at CTC was
the creation of the highly successful New Play Workshop series, which not only built audiences
excited to participate in new play development, but also sent multiple works on to successful New
York and national premieres and evolved to include a significant bi-annual new play commission.
As a director, McSweeny staged noted productions from the American canon including A Raisin in
the Sun, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, and The Glass Menagerie as well as creating a groundbreaking large scale collaboration with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra on Tom Stoppard and
Andre Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. The work of the company as both a producer and
incubator of talent is prominently showcased in the PBS documentary Chautauqua: An American
Narrative.
In addition to CTC, Mr. McSweeny has proudly served in the leadership of SDC, the national
labor union representing Stage Directors and Choreographers in the United States. Elected by his
peers to the Board of Trustees in 2005, he has been the organization’s Treasurer since 2009, with
responsibility for overseeing annual budgets for both the union and its affiliated foundation. As
Treasurer, he lead the union through the financing and planning of a recent successful relocation
of its headquarters and the massive restructuring of its computer and communications platforms.
Alongside his directing, McSweeny has long maintained significant institutional affiliations,
beginning with his four years training at the side of Michael Kahn as Associate Director of the
Shakespeare Theatre in the early 1990’s. Since then, he has served as an Associate Artistic
Director at the George Street Playhouse, Artistic Associate at the National Actor’s Theatre, Artistic
Advisor to the Cape Cod Theatre Project, and Resident Director at New Dramatists, New York’s
leading playwright and new works center. He was part of the founding class of the Lincoln Center
Director’s Lab and is currently a member of Wingspace, a Brooklyn based design collective that
promotes collaboration in the field of theatrical design while fostering a larger conversation about
design, its principles, and the collaborative spirit within the community. Since 2011 he has been
an Affiliated Artist at the Shakespeare Theatre Company where his work includes: The Tempest, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Ion, Major
Barbara, and The Persians. He has been honored to be a Tony Awards voter for the last decade.
Upcoming work in 2015/16 includes a pairing of Brian Friel’s adaptations of Turgenev’s A
Month in the Country and Father’s and Sons for the Gate Theatre in Dublin; the world premiere of
Thomas Bradshaw’s Fulfillment at the Flea Theatre in New York and the American Theater
Company in Chicago, a revival of his hit production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the
Shakespeare Theatre Company, the East Coast premiere of Deidre Kinahan’s Moment for the
Studio Theatre in Washington DC, the world premiere of the new opera Better Gods for the
Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, and pre-production on the independent
feature film about the life of James Connolly, Twelve Days in May.
Originally from Washington, DC, McSweeny maintains strong ties to the political and
cultural community through both his family and his artistic work in the nation’s capital. Although
he intended to be a Russian Studies major, Ethan ended up as the first ever undergraduate to
receive a Theatre and Dramatic Arts degree from Columbia University. More information, and
pictures, is at www.ethanmcsweeny.com.
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