2007 - 2008 Acting Artistic Director Dan Sullivan

Daniel Sullivan, one of New York’s most prolific and lauded directors, will serve as Manhattan Theatre Club’s Acting Artistic Director for the 2007-2008 Season while Lynne Meadow is on sabbatical. Dan is well known to audiences as the director of several outstanding MTC productions, including Donald Marguiles’ Brooklyn Boy and Sight Unseen, David Auburn’s Proof and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole.  

Dan has garnered every major honor a theatre director can receive, including the George Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award, which he won last spring. Nominated for six Tony Awards for Best Director, he won the 2001 Tony for his production of Proof. He has also helmed three Pulitzer Prize winning plays: Donald Marguiles’ Dinner with Friends, as well as Proof and Rabbit Hole, both of which premiered at MTC.

Dan has directed some of MTC’s biggest successes and is the director who has worked most frequently at MTC’s Biltmore theatre. Coincidentally, he was Assistant Director on the Broadway premiere of Hair at the Biltmore back in 1968. Dan began his theatrical career as a stage manager and actor, and in 1965, he was one of the first actors to perform at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. He soon realized that he “was bored with the singular nature of the art of acting. I just couldn’t stay focused; I was too distracted by all the other elements in the room.” One of Dan’s first directing jobs was as the replacement director of A.R. Gurney’s first play Scenes from American Life when he was a member of Lincoln Center’s Acting Company. He found that it was helpful to his process as a director that he came in “as an actor amongst other actors.”

Dan served for sixteen years as Artistic Director of Seattle Repertory Theatre, where he directed over 60 plays and launched their New Play Program, developing new works by Jon Robin Baitz, A.R. Gurney, Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein and Charlayne Woodard. A man of many talents, he also wrote the holiday show Inspecting Carol with the Seattle Repertory Theater Resident Company. The show continues to get produced with great frequency throughout regional theatres in the United States.

Playwrights, actors and other collaborators rave about their experiences working with Dan. At the Abbott Award ceremony last spring, Dan received tributes from several MTC artists including actor Mary-Louise Parker (Proof,Reckless), director Doug Hughes ( Doubt, Mauritius), and playwright Craig Lucas (Blue Window, Reckless). Lynn Nottage, whose Intimate Apparel Dan directed to great success in 2005, said of working with him, “he is measured and precise, masterful at asking questions that help elucidate text, both for an actor and the writer. He doesn’t just direct, he guides. And it is the guidance that permits you as an artist to explore your own craft without feeling impeded.”

In addition to his collaboration with playwrights on world premieres, Dan has directed countless Shakespeare plays and classical revivals. Last spring, he directed Hamlet at South Coast Repertory and last summer he staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Public Theater’s Delacorte in Central Park. Of directing Shakespeare, Dan says “it’s something where you love to come back to it time and time again to see, ‘What if you try this?’ You’re never going to get it right but you keep trying.”

Dan’s shepherding of playwrights made him the perfect candidate to lead MTC in Lynne Meadow’s absence. Commenting on the role Dan will play next season, Lynne said “Dan is one of the country’s finest directors and has major experience running a theater. Knowing that Dan will be working with my closest artistic associates this year ensures my complete confidence in the continuity of MTC’s mission.”