Jeff Zinn

Jeff Zinn (A.R.T. Institute class of 1990, Directing) has been active in the performing arts as musician, actor, director and producer for over thirty years.  A graduate of Franconia College in New Hampshire where he majored in theater and dance, he made his off-Broadway debut as Danny in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity In Chicago; performed as a member of the Boston-based improvisational troupe The Proposition; and appeared on Broadway with Derek Jacobi in The Suicide.  He earned a Masters in Theater Education from NYU in 1978 and turned to directing full-time in 1983.  In the next few years he developed new plays at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The White Barn Theatre, The West Bank Cafe, Theater for the New City, and as a member of the Circle Repertory Company Lab.

In 1988 he joined the directing program at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, under the leadership of Robert Brustein. That year he also became Co-Artistic Director of Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT).  During the next two years, while taking a wide range of courses at Harvard (including filmmaking), he assisted directors Andrei Serban and Liviu Ciulei, co-directed Eric Bogosian's new play, Suburbia, and directed many of his own projects including the premier of a new play by Thomas Babe, and an ambitious production of Ionesco's The Killer.  He completed the A.R.T. Institute program in 1990 and moved to Wellfleet in order to continue building Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.  In 1995 he became WHAT's Producing Artistic Director continuing his tenure there until 2011 when he stepped down in order to complete his book, The Existential Actor: Life and Death, Onstage and Off, (Smith and Kraus Publishing, 2015.) 

In the fall of 2015 he became Managing Director of Gloucester Stage Company where he continues to direct. During the 2016 season he directed The Totalitarians by Peter Sinn Nachtreib, and in 2017 he directed the world premiere of Flight of the Monarch by Jim Frangione. He has guest directed at the Nora Theatre Company, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, and New Repertory Theatre. He has led theater workshops around the country, including Bard College, and taught acting, dramaturgy and theater literature at Wheaton College, Clark College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

He lives in Merrimac, MA with his wife, Crystal.

 

Headshot Photo Credit: Susan Wilson