Theatre Director
Theatre Director of drama and opera performances.
Born in Romania, he graduated from the Theatre and Cinema Institute in Bucharest. His student’s direction of “Julius Caesar” by W. Shakespeare directed in the traditional Japanese Theater Kabuki manner caused a true scandal which made the young director famous overnight. In 1969, with the support of Ford Foundation and personally Ellen Stewart, he moved to the U.S. In 1971, he studied in Paris at Peter Brook’s International Center of Theatre Studies. He directed Medea (1971) and the Fragments of a Greek Trilogy (1974) after the three Euripides’s tragedies ("Trojan Women," "Electra," and "Medea") at Ellen Stewart’s experimental La MaMa Theater. He worked at many major theaters of the U.S.: the New York Public Theater ("Les Parapluies de Cherbourg"), the Lincoln Center (“The Cherry Orchard” by A. Chekhov and “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus), the Lincoln-Center Theater (“The Cherry Orchard” by A. Chekhov and “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus), the Yale Repertory, the T. Gatry and American Conservatory’s Theater. He has been cooperating with the American Repertory Theater, on the stage of which he directed performances of the most diverse genres, including: “The Deer King” by C. Gozzi, “The Love of Three Oranges" by C. Gozzi, “Sganarel” (an evening of Moliere’s farces, 1982), "The Three Sisters” by A. Chekhov, a Philipp Glass’s opera “Juniper,” “The Good Person of Szechwan” by Berthold Brecht, "The Twelfth Night” by W. Shakespeare. Andrei Serban directed dramatic performances in France, UK, Japan, Iran and Korea. In 1990-1994, he had worked as Artistic Director of the Romanian National Theater in Bucharest. “The Cherry Orchard” he had directed at this theater was shown at the First International Chekhov Theater Festival in Moscow. A recognized master of opera direction, Andrei Serban had worked at the opera stages of Paris, Geneva, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Vienna, and Houston. At present, Andrey Serban heads the Theater School of the Columbian University in New York. He was awarded with an “OBI” (the Obie Award is an annual award for an Off-Broadway direction), Tony Award (the top award in the area of theater arts, an analogue of the cinema Oscar and television Emmy awards), and with awards and prizes of the Avignon, Shiraz, and Belgrade festivals.
The Alexandrinsky Theatre performance “Uncle Vanya” is the first Andrey Serban’s direction on the Russian stage.