Barry Edelstein

Adjunct Faculty

Barry Edelstein is an acclaimed stage director who recently concluded five seasons as Artistic Director of New York's Classic Stage Company, an award-winning Off Broadway theater. There he directed Richard III, starring John Turturro and Julianna Margulies; The Winter's Tale, starring David Strathairn; Steve Martin's The Underpants, which he commissioned; Ferdinand Bruckner's 1933 anti-fascist play Race in his own adaptation; Ben Jonson's The Alchemist; and Moliere's The Misanthrope, starring Uma Thurman in her stage debut.  Among the shows he produced are Waiting for Godot, starring John Turturro, Tony Shalhoub and Christopher Lloyd; Pirandello's Naked, starring Mira Sorvino; Beckett's Texts for Nothing, starring Bill Irwin; Philip Glass's "chamber opera" In the Penal Colony, based on the Kafka story; and Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Amy Irving.  Other directing credits include As You Like It, starring Gwyneth Paltrow (Williamstown Theater Festival); Arthur Miller's All My Sons (Broadway's Roundabout Theater); Julius Caesar, starring Jeffrey Wright in Cental Park's "Shakespeare in the Park"; The Merchant of Venice and Steve Martin's WASP and Other Plays at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.  He has also directed at numerous regional theaters around the USA. He is about to direct his first film for the prestigious Fox Searchlab. Edelstein has taught Shakespeare at the Juilliard School, NYU's Grad Acting Program, USC, and the Public Theater's "Shakespeare Lab."  He has lectured on theater at colleges around the USA and the world, and has written on the subject for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and American Theater Magazine. He is a graduate of Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.