Ryan Dobrin, Visiting Guest Artist Fellow
“I am a theater practitioner, deeply interested in unilateral mentorship, shared leadership, flexible processes, human-first practices, and in the re-interrogation of dramaturgically-sound spectacle…The work I choose to engage with…often asks questions of morality and our place in the world.”
Ryan Dobrin (he/him/his) is a queer, biracial New York-based director and producer interested in highly-stylized storytelling, ethical implications, the existence of magic and spectacle, and narratives with a strong, beating heart. He is one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of the Obie Award-winning The Movement Theatre Company, a member of the 2020–2022 Roundabout Directors Group, and the Director of the collective Those Guilty Creatures. Previous fellowships include The Drama League, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Ars Nova. Recent work includes serving as Associate Director to Tony Award-winner Christopher Ashley on Diana, The Musical on Broadway, and Assistant Director to Tony and Emmy Award-winner Billy Porter on The Life at New York City Center Encores!, as well as directing productions and new play development with Victory Gardens Theater, Fault Line Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Fordham University, The Drama League’s DirectorFest, Atlantic Acting School, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing, Shakespeare Academy at Stratford, A4, Playdate Theatre, Ars Nova, and Waterwell. He directed and co-created a phone-based short film, The Homiesexuals: a social media tragedy written by Gage Tarlton. With The Movement Theatre Company, Dobrin helped produce Aleshea Harris’ groundbreaking ritual What to Send Up When It Goes Down; was nominated for a 2021 Drama League Award for the 1MOVE: DES19NED BY… commissioned projects creating work for immigrant and Black designers at the beginning of the shutdown; and continues to uplift the work of daring theater artists of color. Dobrin graduated from Wesleyan University in 2018, where he received the Rachel Henderson Theater Prize and the Outreach and Community Service Prize in Theater.