Executive Artistic Director
David Bruin (he/him) has served as the executive artistic director of Celebration Barn since the fall of 2021. Since then, the Barn has produced workshops led by many of the leading instructors in physical theater, clowning, and experimental theater and performance including Bill Irwin, Aitor Basauri, Budi Miller, Alex Tatarsky, Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley, J.Ed Araiza & Ellen Lauren, Lisa Fagan, Encompass Collective, and more. The Barn has also developed or produced original work, such as The Imaginary Invalid, adapted by Bill Irwin; TRAD, created and performed by Hannah Mitchell; Tony Montanaro: A Love Story, written and performed by Karen Montanaro, directed by Robert Post; and Project Creatine, conceived by Lex Brown and Jordan Weatherston Pitts, composed by Samuel Beebe, libretto and direction by Brown, performed by Pitts. David has also expanded the Barn’s Theater in Schools program, which brings live theatrical productions and hands-on workshops to elementary schools in Western Maine.
From 2019 through 2021, David worked as a co-curator of the annual Prelude Festival, a program of the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at CUNY. He was a co-artistic director of Yale Cabaret during its 2015-16 season, where he co-curated the inaugural Satellite Festival. As a dramaturg, he has collaborated with Robert Woodruff, Liz Diamond, Lars Jan, and Asa Horvitz, and he has produced new work by Jeremy O. Harris and Erin Markey. He has worked as a theater consultant for Scott Rudin Productions, and currently works as a creative consultant for Jeff Augustin. He is a co-editor, along with Melanie Joseph, of A Moment on the Clock of the World (Haymarket Books, 2019), an anthology of new writing inspired by the Foundry Theatre. He has held editorial positions at Yale’s Theater magazine, and his writing has appeared in Theater, The Brooklyn Rail, and HowlRound.
David is currently an adjunct instructor in the Department of Drama at New York University, where he teaches courses in theater studies. He has previously taught at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and Yale College.
David is a member of the governing body of the Cultural Alliance of Maine and a member of the advisory board of counter/current:collective.