Brian Mertes

is a director whose body of work spans theater, television and film. He has directed the world premiere of many new plays including David Greenspan’s The Myopia for the Foundry Theater at the Atlantic and Jose Rivera’s Massacre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in NYC. He has developed new work at Ensemble Studio Theater, Manhattan Class Company, Soho Rep, Naked Angels, Manhattan Theater Club, The Public, PS 122, Actors Theater of Louisville, Playwrights Center Minneapolis, Playmakers Rep, New Dramatists, Ars Nova, PlayPenn, and BACA. 

With Julian Crouch, Mertes co-directed Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Cathedral Square for the Salzburg Festival.  The production was also filmed and aired on television and in cinemas across Austria and Germany.

For two decades, Mertes regularly directed at Juilliard, most recently a multimedia theater work based on Sam Shepard’s Paris, Texas with alt-country rocker, Jim White. He has taught directing for the Columbia and NYU film programs, and has been a guest director at North Carolina School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, NYU Grad, UT Austin, and Yale.

Mertes has directed television for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, garnering three Emmy and three DGA nominations, and an Emmy for directing.

With co-directors Melissa Kievman and Wendy vanden Heuvel, he helms an annual retreat at an old stone house in upstate New York, where, with their company, they have presented epic, environmental stagings of all of Chekhov’s plays with New York’s top actors and the collaboration of the local community.  This work led him to Industry City in Brooklyn, where he staged Lanford Wilson's Balm In Gilead in collaboration with playwright Beau Willimon and director Alex Harvey.  His feature film I am a Seagull, created with The Chekhov Project, was released in 2018.

Mertes is currently directing the world premiere of Catherine Gropper’s The Meeting: The Interpreter starring Frank Woods and Kelly Curran Off-Broadway and continues to serve as Head of the MFA Directing Program at Brown University/Trinity Rep and Directing Associate at Trinity where he’s directed Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park, Curt Columbus' adaptation of Crime and Punishment, Sam Shepard's Lie of the Mind, José Rivera’s Marisol, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate.

Image Credits: Priya Patel, Cha See, Farrol Mertes, Christopher Sullivan, Dan Scully, Rachael Shane, Johnny Moreno, Mark Turek