Bio

Jonathan Bernstein’s plays and musicals have been produced all over the country and he is currently at work developing a dance play entitled The Shape She Makes with choreographer Susan Misner which will be produced by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge next season, as well as completing a new musical with collaborators Gavin Creel and Robbie Roth.

Directing credits include work at the Atlantic Theater Company, Naked Angels, Williamstown Theater Festival, New York Stage & Film, Signature Theater, Joe’s Pub, Ensemble Studio Theater and many others. He has worked in various capacities at New York’s City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Roundabout Theatre, Public Theater, and 52nd Street Project, where he writes, directs and teaches.

He recently participated in NYC’s 24 Hour Musicals Benefit, writing an original musical with composer Jeanine Tesori between the hours of 11:00pm and 5:45am. This was his second time writing a musical for the charity; the first time he was paired with composer David Yazbek.

Additionally, Broadway/London supervising director credits include Private Lives starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, The Iceman Cometh starring Kevin Spacey and Paul Giamatti; Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? starring Dame Diana Rigg and David Suchet; The King And I; and the musical Chicago, in charge of overseeing both the (still running) 1996 Broadway revival, and the many national/international companies it has spawned.

He is the Artistic Director of The Performing Arts Project (an international arts training program for ages 16-24), serves on the faculty at the Eugene O’Neill National Theater Institute, and is a professor of Playwriting and Script Analysis in the MFA Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU.

Plus, he is a New York Mets fan which — like anything difficult — is fundamentally worthwhile.