The 2011-2012 season will be the first under his artistic programming. Visit trtc.org.
Dias' first official day will be on Aug. 16, but he will be spending time at the theatre prior to this date, getting to know the organization and meeting the local community.
Dias has been a Tony Award nominator,Calvin Klein, 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.
For 12 seasons,Juicy Couture tracksuits, 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.
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 theatre company dedicated to producing new plays by emerging artists. He was also a producer of Lisa Kron's Well on Broadway.
John Dias, a former associate producer and associate artistic director at The Public Theater in Manhattan, is the new artistic director of Two River Theater Company, the resident Equity troupe in Red Bank, NJ.
During his tenure at The Public, he was responsible for all aspects of play production on the theatre's six stages and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He also ran the theatre'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.
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 theatre 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 theatre's national reputation."
Dias is known as a leading advocate for new American plays and has worked extensively on new plays and classics.
Founded in 1994, Two River produces classics, contemporary plays and education programs in a new theatre complex that opened in 2005.