MITCHELL POLONSKY

Mitchell is a multidisciplinary stage director and designer from Cincinnati, Ohio and the co-Artistic Director of The Goat Exchange, an experimental ensemble with whom he has directed more than 20 original productions. His work often interpolates a wide range of disparate source texts from canonical dramatic works, to new writing from diverse voices, to found and verbatim historical transcripts in an attempt to recontextualize and present perspectives from obscure and forgotten corners of history. His process is interdisciplinary and deeply collaborative, incorporating influences from opera, dance, literature, film, contemporary music, architecture, slapstick, vaudeville, mixed-media installation, pop-culture, and public art.

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Recent work includes DEADCLASSO, OHIO at the New Ohio Theatre, CHATHAM HOUSE RULES at the Pleasance in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,  JASON at the VAULT Festival, MEMONICA at HERE Arts Center, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and Mae West's SEX at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, Mac Wellman’s 7 BLOWJOBS at La Mama, WOYZECK/GALILEO (a double-bill of Büchner's Woyzeck and Brecht's The Life of Galileo) at the Fogg Art Museum, [OTHELLO] DESDEMONA, a double bill of Othello and Toni Morrison’s Desdemona at Sanders Theatre, and an original disco musical adaptation of THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES at the Tony Award-winning American Repertory Theater. At the off-West End Bunker Theatre in London he developed a production of Tennessee Williams' THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY and TITANIC PLAYS, an original devised work combining Eugene O’Neill’s two earliest plays Thirst and Fog with verbatim accounts of Titanic passengers. His 2018 reimagining of ANTIGONE was staged in Harvard Stadium for an audience of 6,000 community members and featured an original choral/orchestral score alongside a disco band, a Latin band, and a set comprised of 40ft inflatable sculptures. His collaboratively devised short-film MEMORY PLAY was awarded best experimental short-film at the 2020 Ivy International Film Festival. Additional credits include SALOME, OR THE CULT OF THE CLITORIS: A HISTORICAL PHALLUSY (The Lir, Dublin), STREETCAR [I DON'T WANT REALISM] (Farkas Hall), CABARET (The Queen's Head), THE ROOM (Explosives B). His opera work includes MAGIC FLUTE (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography), and DIE FLEDERMAUS (Agassiz Theater) and his collaboratively devised short-film MEMORY PLAY, adapted from Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, was awarded best experimental short-film at the 2020 Ivy International Film Festival.

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Mitchell has also worked as an Associate Director with world-renowned Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera on Beckett's ENDGAME (Festival d’Automne, Kunstfestivaldesarts) and with Daniel Kramer, the former Artistic Director of the English National Opera, on productions including SADKO at the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent and PELLEAS & MELISANDE,  ANGELS IN AMERICA, and KASPAR at the Burgtheater in Vienna. He has worked as an assistant at The American Repertory Theater, The Wooster Group, The Gate Theatre, and Big  Dance Theater, and with Sam Gold on Broadway's MACBETH.

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Mitchell holds a dual degree in Theater, Dance, and Media and English Literature from Harvard College and an MFA in Theatre Directing from the Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art in Dublin. He has studied physical theater at the Ludwik Solski National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Krakow and the Moscow Art Theatre School, and stage direction at L'Académie internationale de Mise en scène de Théâtre musical. He is a recipient of the US-Ireland Alliance's George J. Mitchell Fellowship and has received grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Austria's Agency for Education and Internationalisation.