Sam Gold

Sam Gold is an American theater director and actor. Having studied at Cornell University and Juilliard School he became known for directing both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. Gold built his career on collaborations with young, upcoming authors. The reason: ‘I think it is wonderful to be able to work with writers while their play is still developing. It is very exciting to be at the beginning of the process with them. When everything still has to be formed.’ During the past few years, he has been directing classic plays as well, including Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Gold: ‘When I direct a classic play, I am not very interested in bringing back the context in which the plays were originally performed. That is because of my experience with new plays. I work for the audience that is in the theatre today. The challenge is to make old plays interesting to a new audience.’ He himself sums up his way of directing as minimalistic. He won an Obie Award for best Off-Broadway directing for Circle Mirror Transformation by the young American playwright Annie Baker. Gold’s debut on Broadway was in 2011 with Seminar by Theresa Rebeck: For the Roundabout Theatre, he directed Hollywood stars Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in 2014. The musical Fun Home, which he made for the Public Theatre, was showered in awards and is now performed on Broadway. Sam Gold is resident director at the Roundabout Theatre Company.