John Collins (theater)

John Collins
Born	c. 1969 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Occupation	director, designer

John Collins (born c.1969 Chapel Hill, North Carolina) is an American experimental theatre director and designer. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Elevator Repair Service (ERS) and has directed or co-directed all of its productions since 1991. Most notable among his work with ERS is Gatz, a verbatim performance of the entire text of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Between 1991 and 2006, Collins worked as a sound and lighting designer, primarily designing sound for The Wooster Group from 1993 to 2006.

Collins was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 1970, the family relocated to Atlanta, Georgia and in 1974 to Vidalia, Georgia, where Collins grew up. Collins earned a combined degree in English and Theater Studies from Yale University in 1991. At Yale, he met future long-term collaborators and ERS co-founders including novelist James Hannaham, playwright/performer Rinne Groff, writer/producer Steve Bodow, choreographer Katherine Profeta, and performers Susie Sokol and Leo Marks.

Collins — along with Hannaham, Groff, Profeta, Colleen Werthmann, and Bradley Glenn — formed Elevator Repair Service in the fall of 1991. Shortly thereafter, they were joined by Steve Bodow, who also served as co-Artistic Director until 2002 before joining the writing staff of The Daily Show. The ensemble’s first production was a version of Tristan Tzara's The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire Extinguisher.

Collins’s early work with ERS was presented at downtown New York City venues such as Nada, Here Arts Center, The Ontological at St. Mark's Church, and Performance Space 122. The company’s first original piece to tour Europe was Cab Legs (directed by Collins with Steve Bodow) an original work by the ensemble based loosely on a Tennessee Williams play and infused with choreography based on Bollywood dancing and Max Fleischer cartoons.

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