David Willinger

A native New Yorker, David Willinger has been active in the theatre since the age of nine, when he played Ado Annie’s father in a day-camp production of Oklahoma. There followed 17 years of acting, during which he performed at The Theatre East, The Mercer Arts Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Provincetown Playhouse, the Mahopac Playhouse, the Dorset Playhouse, and in college productions, among others. Then he exchanged acting for directing and writing. Non-musical self-authored plays, which he has also directed, include: Andrea’s Got Two Boyfriends (published by DPS and performed all over the country, including its initial run at the legendary La Mama E.T.C. and long runs in Los Angeles and San Francisco–and even in Poland), Malcolm’s Time, Frida y Diego, Bombing the Cradle, Caprichos, and The Trail of Tears: A Drama from the Historical Record, written with Peggy Dean. His play Out of Their Minds about James Joyce’s eccentric daughter Lucia and her affair with the young Samuel Beckett, was produced at New Media. His most recent self-authored production was Existence in 2022, which played at Theater for the New City in NYC’s East Village. His upcoming new original play, Bring Them Back, will play there in May 2024. He has adapted and directed such novels as Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent, Camus’s The Stranger, Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Paul Willems’s The Wound, Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, Ibarguengoitìa’s The Dead Girls, and William Saroyan’s novel Rock Wagram under the title The Upper Lip. Has written the book and lyrics for the musical The Open Gate with music by Arthur Abrams, based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s epic novel, The Manor, and for a musical version of Thomas Hardy’s famous novel called Casterbridge with Christopher Beste. He also wrote book and lyrics for The Tale of Teiresias and The Idiot that ran at Hartley House Theatre as well as an opera based on Hugo Claus’s The Life and Works of Leopold II with Hellmuth Dusedau, composing. He has directed at TNC, La Mama, Interartheatre, HERE, the Laurie Beecham Theatre, the Avalon Repertory Company, and the Cubiculo, all in New York, as well as for the Ambassador Theater in Washington D.C. He has directed world premières of Eduardo Machado’s Don Juan in NYC, Serge Goriely’s The Sorcerers, Adrienne Kennedy’s Diary of Lights as well as co-directing her Solo Voyages together with Joseph Chaikin. On Jewish subjects, he has directed René Kalisky’s Jim the Lionhearted as well as Hanoch Levin’s Job’s Passion and Winter Wedding. As professor of theatre at City College of NY, he has directed such large-scale productions as King Lear, Richard III, Twelfth Night, The Cherry Orchard, Mary Gallagher’s ¿De Donde? Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Gorky’s Enemies, Edward Ravenscroft’s The London Cuckolds, and such musicals as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Promenade, The Wiz, Little Shop of Horrors. He has co-authored the screenplay for the film Take the Bridge and both written and directed the full-length feature movie Lunatics, Lovers, and Actors. He has 9 published anthologies of play translations from French and Dutch to his credit and also recently published Ivo van Hove Onstage with Routledge. He has won two Fulbright fellowships, three Jerome Foundation Grants, a Drama-Logue Award, a BAEF fellowship, a Peg Santvoordt Foundation grant, a Translation Center Award, etc. He studied and worked with Joseph Chaikin, with Arlen Digitale at HB Studios and, chiefly, with Eve Shapiro at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.