Oskar Eustis

Oskar Eustis (born July 31, 1958) has been the Artistic Director at the Public Theater in New York City since 2005. He has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the United States.

Eustis grew up in Minnesota. His parents, Warren Eustis, a district attorney and an official of the Democratic Party in Minnesota, and Doris Marquit, a women’s-studies professor, divorced when he was ten. He graduated from high school at age 15 and moved to New York City, briefly attended New York University, and then co-founded the Red Wing Theater Company. After working in Switzerland, he moved to San Francisco, and started working at the Eureka Theatre Company. He met his wife, Laurie, at the Mark Taper Forum.

Eustis has been the Artistic Director of the Public Theater since 2005. He was the artistic director at the Trinity Repertory Company (Providence, Rhode Island) from 1994 to 2005. From 1989 to 1994 he was the associate artistic director for the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He was the resident director and dramaturg for the Eureka Theatre Company (San Francisco, California) from 1981 to 1986 and then artistic director from 1986 to 1989. He started the Red Wing Company when he was sixteen with Stephan Muller.

At the Public, Eustis directed the New York premieres of Rinne Groff’s Compulsion and The Ruby Sunrise, Larry Wright’s The Human Scale, and the 2008 Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet. At Trinity Repertory Company he directed the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home in 2003 and Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul in 2002, both recipients of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production.

While at the Eureka Theatre, he commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum.

He was a professor of theatre, speech and dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He also served on the faculty of The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

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