Brian Mertes

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Brian Mertes, Salzburg 2014

Brian Mertes (born in Texas ) is an American theater and television director . In 2013 he was responsible - together with Julian Crouch - for the new production of Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival .

life and work

Mertes was born in Texas and raised in Kansas. He completed his directorial studies a. a. in Philadelphia and in Poland . In the United States was known for a number of world premieres of contemporary theater texts in the 1990s. In 2003, together with his wife, director Melissa Kievman, he launched the Lake Lucille Project with Chekhov productions in the open air and in changing locations. In addition to his stage work, Mertes also directs television series.

Stage work

Mertes became known as a director of contemporary theater texts. Among other things, he was responsible for the premieres of José Riveras Massacre (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York, 2007) and David Greenspan's The Myopia (Foundry Theater in New York, 2010). He has also shown new work to such different houses as Ensemble Studio Theater, Manhattan Class Company, Soho Rep, Naked Angels, Manhattan Theater Club, The Public, PS 122, Actors Theater of Louisville, Playwrights Center Minneapolis, New Dramatists, Ars Nova, PlayPenn , as well as at the BACA. Finally he staged in 2012 in an empty warehouse in Industry City in Brooklyn Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead (1965).

His closeness to Cechov is not only documented by the Lake Lucille Project, but also by a production by the Three Sisters (Chautauqua Theater Company, 2011).

Lake Lucille Project

Brian Mertes and Melissa Kievman own a 200 year old stone house near Lake Lucille in New York State , about 40 minutes from Manhattan. Since 2003, the two have been developing pieces by Chekhov there every summer with up to 65 actors and crew , deliberately avoiding the use of a classic stage and the separation of art and life, of private and public, of work and food . The productions now have cult status. They rehearse for a week, there is only one performance - whether in the rain or in the sunshine. Performers include well-known New York actors and singers, as well as a number of young talents. The audience is made up of neighbors and friends from the area, as well as visitors who travel specifically. Important productions:

As a television director

Mertes has been working regularly for American television since the 1990s, for ABC , CBS , NBC and Fox . He directed, among other things, 127 episodes of the Springfield Story (1993-2009), three episodes of Law and Order ( Legacy and Ritual , both 1997, and Tabloid , 1998), six episodes of As the World Turns (2009) and with seven episodes of General Hospital (2010).

Mertes' work on the Springfield Story has garnered six Directors Guild of America Award and TV Emmy nominations to date . In 1994 he won the Emmy .

Anyone

In 2013 he was invited by Alexander Pereira and Sven-Eric Bechtolf , the artistic director and drama director of the Salzburg Festival , to work with Julian Crouch on a fundamental new version of Hofmannsthal'schen Jedermann on Salzburg Domplatz. The new production split the theater critics, but was enthusiastically received by the audience with standing ovations . The Hamburger Abendblatt stated: "If Brian Mertes and Julian Crouch were interested in simple immediacy, then they have achieved this goal and dusted off 'Jedermann' in a way that is breathtaking by Salzburg standards."

Teaching

Mertes is a full professor of performing arts at the renowned Brown University in Providence , where he heads the Master of Fine Arts Directing Program . At the local Trinity Repertory Company he directed Bruce Norris ' successful play Clybourne Park (2010) in October 2011 and a dramatization of Dostojevski's Crime and Punishment with only three actors in early 2013 . The costumes for both productions were designed by Olivera Gajic . In January 2014 he worked with this theater group on a production of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind (1985).

His teaching activities brought Mertes to Columbia University and NYU , and he was also a guest director at the North Carolina School of the Arts , the Purchase College of the State University of New York , the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale . Mertes also teaches at the Juilliard School , where he staged, among others, John Barton's trilogy The Greeks and, most recently, the multimedia theater work The Americans in 2010 , in which he wrote texts from Sam Shepard's Paris, Texas , songs by the alternative country singer Jim White , and stories from his students linked to a scenic collage.

Award

  • 1994 Emmy for Best Director (Daytime Serials), together with Matt Lagle, for Guiding Light (= the name of the Springfield Story at the time ), episode 14.322

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New York Times: A Fantastical Epic Seen Through Gertrude Stein's Rose-Colored Glasses , accessed July 28, 2013
  2. ^ The Chautauqua Daily: Despite genuine insights, CTC's 'Three Sisters' mostly overdone , accessed July 28, 2013
  3. ^ The Lake Lucille Project , Homepage Brian Mertes, accessed July 28, 2013
  4. ^ The Seagull at Lake Lucille , accessed July 28, 2013
  5. ↑ Play Bill ( Memento of the original from May 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed July 28, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.playbill.com
  6. ↑ Filmography by TV series of Brian Mertes , IMBD, accessed July 28, 2013
  7. ^ ORF : Everyone splits theater criticism , July 22, 2013
  8. ↑ Quotation from Kurier : Jedermann: Between "Triumph" and "Leichtprodukt" , July 22, 2013
  9. ↑ WPRO News Talk 630: Trinity stages stimulating 'Crime and Punishment' ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed July 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.630wpro.com
  10. ↑ The Julliard Journal: Finds Inspiration In The Americans ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed July 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.juilliard.edu
personal data
SURNAME Mertes, Brian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater and television director
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Texas