brandon woolf, ph.d.

I am an interdisciplinary theater artist and a scholar of contemporary performance. Over the last fifteen years, I co-founded and co-directed three public performance ensembles – Culinary Theater, Shakespeare im Park Berlin, and the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization [UCMeP]. I have recently presented performances at Kennedy Center, Harlem Stage, Invisible Dog Arts Center, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Target Margin Theater, Brooklyn College, Prelude Festival, 14th Street Y, Fulton Center, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center, Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Görlitzer Park in Berlin, and a USPS mailbox on Prospect Park West. These and other projects have been featured in scholarly forums like Theatre Survey, South Atlantic Quarterly, L.M. Bogad’s Tactical Performance, and Barbara Fuchs’ Theater of Lockdown, as well as in the New York Times, London Guardian, Tagesspiegel, Berliner Zeitung, San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Reich’s film Inequality for All, and The Kelly Clarkson Show on daytime TV. My work has also been supported by grants and residencies from the Fulbright Foundation, DAAD, Brooklyn Arts Council, American Society for Theater Research, Drama League, University Settlement, NYU Center for the Humanities, the Mercury Store, and the International Research Centers for “Interweaving Performance Cultures” and “Intervening Arts” in Berlin. Concurrent with my artistic practice, my critical work facilitates connections and collaborations between artists, academics, arts administrators, and activists. Institutional Theatrics, my book about experimental performance and public policy in Germany since the Cold War was published by Northwestern University Press in 2021. I am currently clinical associate professor of English at New York University, where I direct the Program in Dramatic Literature.