The Board of Trustees of Two River Theater Company announces the appointment of John Dias—a producer and dramaturg who is a leading advocate for bold new American plays and has worked extensively on notable productions of the classics—as the theater’s new Artistic Director.
Dias comes to Two River Theater from Affinity Collaborative Theater, a production company he co-founded, which is dedicated to bringing daring new works from around the world to New York. Prior to that, he was a founding artistic director of Playwright’s Realm, an off-Broadway theater company dedicated to producing new plays by emerging artists. He was also a producer of Lisa Kron’s Well on Broadway.
For 12 seasons, he worked in a variety of capacities—including as Associate Producer and Associate Artistic Director—at The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, where he worked with both Producer George C. Wolfe and Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. During his tenure at The Public, he was responsible for all aspects of play production on the theater’s six stages and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He also ran the theater’s literary department, overseeing new-play workshops and productions of classics by Shakespeare and other writers, and developed and taught in the Shakespeare Lab, a professional actor training program. Before coming to New York, Dias was Dramaturg at Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, under Artistic Director Mark Lamos.
Dias has been a Tony Award nominator, a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous other organizations, and has taught and lectured at New York University, Yale University, and Columbia University. He received his BA from George Washington University and his MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Says Dias of his appointment, "Two River is an extraordinary institution, and I look forward to carrying on its tradition of producing the classics in dynamic and powerful re-imaginings, as well as to being an incubator for daring new work. I want to make this theater a home for talented emerging and established artists—those who live in and around New York and many others who will come here from across the country to work with us—as we produce great plays and build the theater’s national reputation.”
Founded in 1994 and now based in Red Bank, New Jersey, Two River produces classics, contemporary plays and innovative education programs in a state-of-the-art theater complex that opened in 2005.
