J.R. Sullivan is a director, producer, and writer, having worked in theaters nationwide as well as heading companies as artistic director. The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout hailed his 2018 Off-Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman’s Days to Come for the Mint Theatre as one of the top productions of the year.
From 2009-2013, he was the Artistic Director of New York’s Pearl Theatre Company, where he directed productions of Hard Times, Playboy of the Western World, Widowers’ Houses, Biography, The Importance of Being Earnest, Richard II, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and the New York premiere of Wittenberg. The Pearl received a Drama Desk Special Award in 2011, recognizing its significant contribution to New York theatre.
Sullivan was the founder and producing director of the New American Theater in northern Illinois, a company that thrived under his direction before he moved on to a free-lance career and then to his stint as associate artistic director with the Utah Shakespeare Festival from 2002-2009, staging productions ranging from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams, including Henry IV, Part One, Amadeus, Hamlet, Henry V, The Glass Menagerie, and Romeo and Juliet.
His work has also been seen in regional theaters nationwide, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Theatre X, Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre, the Studio Theatre in Washington DC, the Delaware Theatre Company, and the Resident Ensemble Players at the University of Delaware.
In Chicago Sullivan has directed for Northlight Theatre, American Theatre Company, Turnaround, A Red Orchid Theatre, Live Bait Theatre, Prop Theatre, and the Onyx Theatre.
His adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, in collaboration with Joseph Hanreddy, have been produced at regional houses nationwide, including Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the Oregon, Utah, and Idaho Shakespeare Festivals, Great Lakes Shakespeare, South Coast Repertory, Round House Theatre, People’s Light & Theater Company, Cincinnati Playhouse, and Connecticut Rep.
In May and June his Chicago production of Steven Dietz’s Bloomsday will be onstage for the Remy Bumppo company at Theater Wit.