Curt

Curt Columbus is a multidisciplinary theater artist who has been making live performances professionally for forty years.  He became the fifth artistic director of Tony-award winning Trinity Repertory Company in Providence Rhode Island in January 2006. He is also the artistic director of the Brown University’s MFA programs in Acting and Directing.  Prior to coming to Trinity, Curt lived and worked in the Chicago theater scene for almost twenty years.

He was artistic associate of Victory Gardens Theater from 1989-1994, the director of the University of Chicago’s University Theater from 1994-2000, and the associate artistic director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company from 2000-2005.

His directing credits for Trinity include Sweeney Todd, The Merchant of Venice, Cabaret, Blithe Spirit, Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage,, Ragtime and the world premieres of The Completely Fictional, Utterly True, Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allen Poe and Social Creatures, among many others.

Curt is also a playwright whose produced works include Sis3ters, Paris by Night (a musical with composers Andre Pluess and Amy Warren), The Dreams of Antigone, and Sparrow Grass. Curt’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (with Marilyn Campbell) has won awards and accolades at theaters around the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. He is also a translator, most notably  of Anton Chekhov’s plays,  but also of Elsa Bernstein’s Maria Arndt, Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear, and Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna.  His work  is published by Dramatists Play Service, including his play, Sparrow Grass. and his translations of Chekhov’s Ivanov, Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard, and de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna.