INSIDE THE REP

David Esbjornson
Artistic Director
David Esbjornson has directed The Great Gatsby, Tuesdays with Morrie and the world premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Purgitorio for Seattle Repertory Theatre. Recent credits include the inauguration of the New Guthrie Theater with the world premiere of The Great Gatsby, the Theatre Royal Haymarket (London) production of A Few Good Men with Rob Lowe, Much Ado About Nothing with Jimmy Smits, Kristen Johnston, and Sam Waterston at New York Shakespeare Festival/Delecorte Theatre, the critically acclaimed revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart with Raul Esparza and Johanna Gleason, Kathleen Tolan’s Memory House with Dianne Wiest at Playwrights Horizons, world premieres of Tuesdays With Morrie by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom, In The Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks at the Public Theater, My Old Lady by Israel Horowitz with Sian Phillips, Peter Friedman and Jan Maxwell at the Promenade Theatre, Neil Simon’s Rose and Walsh with Jane Alexander and Len Cariou at the Geffen Theatre, and Homebody/Kabul by Tony Kushner in London. Mr. Esbjornson has worked with Arthur Miller on two premiere productions: The Ride Down Mt. Morgan at the Public and on Broadway with Patrick Stewart and Frances Conroy, and the world premiere of Resurrection Blues with Laila Robins at the Guthrie Theater. He has also had a longstanding relationship with Edward Albee, directing the Tony Award-winning play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway starring Mercedes Ruehl and Bill Pullman, and Sally Field and Bill Irwin, The Play About the Baby with Marion Seldes and Brian Murray, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Ruehl. David has helmed three Fund for New American Plays world premieres: Another Part of the House after Lorca, by Migdalia Cruz, the trilogy New Music by novelist Reynolds Price at the Cleveland Play House, and Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner. For seven years, Esbjornson was the artistic director of the Classic Stage Company (which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Body of Work). He directed many of the company’s productions including Thérèse Raquin (Obie Award, best direction), The Entertainer with Brian Murray and Jean Stapleton (Drama League nomination Best revival), Iphigenia and Other Daughters by Ellen McLaughlin (Drama Desk nomination for direction), Endgame by Samuel Beckett (Drama Desk nomination best revival), and Entertaining Mr. Sloane by Joe Orton (Lucille Lortel Award, best revival). He has collaborated with many other writers including John Belluso, Anthony Clarvoe, Maria Irene Fornes, Beth Henley, Kevin Kling, Romulus Linney, Patrick Marber, and José Rivera. Esbjornson holds an MFA from NYU and has been in residence at the O’Neill Festival, Iowa Playwrights Festival, received a Quinn Martin Honorary Chair at University of California, San Diego, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Gustavus Adolphus College.