Adam Marple

Adam Marple is a director, designer and educator whose work explores how performance can build community and foster empathy. He teaches devising and directing in the School of Drama, encouraging students to embrace curiosity, collaboration and bold artistic exploration. Marple has directed more than 50 productions and interdisciplinary works across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Southeast Asia, and he has taught and mentored artists at universities and in professional organizations around the world. He is the founder of The Sustainable Theatre Project, which focuses on sustainably made theatre presented in non-traditional spaces, and The Board of Directors, a global community and podcast for theatre directors.

His research focuses on audience-making as a new pedagogy of performance, sustainable approaches to theatre-making in global contexts and The Viewpoints — a system that studies performance-related applications of time and space — as an interdisciplinary and transcultural practice. Marple previously served as co-artistic director of The Theatre of Others podcast.

Career Highlights

• Founder and artistic director, The Sustainable Theatre Project
• Founder and moderator, The Board of Directors podcast
• Co-artistic director, The Theatre of Others podcast
• Has directed more than half of Shakespeare's canon and written, devised or adapted nearly 20 new works
• Faculty appointments at LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore), Universidad de las Américas Puebla (Mexico) and The American University (Cairo)
• Guest artist, teacher and mentor with organizations including Lincoln Center Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Juilliard School and Yale School of Drama

Honors, Awards & Recognitions

• Recipient of grants from the British Embassy Gulf Strategy Fund, the British Council Creative Commissions, LASALLE College of the Arts, Chautauqua Institution and The American University in Cairo
• Shubert Presidential Fellowship, Columbia University

Publications

• Host, The Board of Directors podcast (2025–present)
• Co-host, The Theatre of Others podcast (2020–25)
• “The Viewpoints as Transcultural Pedagogy,” in Western Theatre in Global Contexts: Directing and Teaching Culturally Inclusive Drama around the World (2020)
• “New Narratives for a Healthy Planet: Creative Writing and Art Projects Reveal We Still Have a Chance,” The Lancet Planetary Health (2023)
• “Applying ‘The Viewpoints’ to Multimedia Performance,” Global Performance Studies (2020)
• “Does Singapore Theatre Have a Directing Problem?” Arts Equator (2019)

Organizations

• The Sustainable Theatre Project
• The Board of Directors
• The Theatre of Other