Rory Pelsue is an Obie-winning director of new and classic plays, operas, musicals, and live-stream performances. He is best known for directing the live-stream productions of This American Wife and Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Drama League Nominee Circle Jerk (and its Obie-winning in-person remount at the Connelly Theater) with Fake Friends, where he serves as Resident Director. 

 

Recent and upcoming credits include directing the world premieres of Read to Me at Portland Stage, The Show on the Roof at Boise Contemporary Theater, and Deathbed Edition at Ars Nova ANT Fest; workshops of Circle Jerk at Ars Nova Makers Lab and Alumni Relations at South Coast Repertory Theater; Something Rotten at Northwestern University; and working as an assistant director on Agrippina, Porgy and Bess, Turandot, and The Rakes Progress at the Metropolitan Opera.

 

Originally from Newburyport, Massachusetts, Rory received his MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where he received the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for directing. At Yale, Rory directed Passion , Tent Revival, Othello , Bluebeard's Wife, The Apple Tree, And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens, Antony + Cleopatra and Mies Julie. 

 

Additional artistic leadership experience includes serving as artistic director of Yale Cabaret, Yale Summer Cabaret, MaineStage Shakespeare, and Oxbridge Opera, a UK-based company that specialized in rarely-heard editions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

 

Rory has taught Directing, Theater History, and Acting Shakespeare at Queens College, and directed academic productions at Quinnipiac University, The University of Pennsylvania, Fordham University, and more. 

 

As an assistant director, Rory has worked at the Metropolitan Opera, Roundabout Theater Company, McCarter Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, Irondale Theater, and Compagnia de’ Colombari. He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, has trained with Carmen Morgan and Art Equity, and is one of 12 inaugural members of the Roundabout Directors Group. . @rorypelsue