Brendan McCall (USA), relocated to Western Australia to serve as the new Manager at the Cummins Theatre in September 2012. His work as an award-winning professional theatre and dance artist has been presented in over thirty countries on four continents since 1994. Recent directing credits include: Mary Shelley and Her Daemon (Belgium, Sweden, Latvia, and USA), which he also wrote; his original adaptations of Ibsen Nora and Torvald: Scenes from a Marriage (Turkey) and Ghostmachine (Norway and the Netherlands); the world premieres of Marilyn/God (Norway, Sweden) and Beckett at Greystone’s Bay (New York); Yemaya’s Belly (New Mexico); others. Previous acting roles include: Betrayal (Winner Contemporary Theatre Production, Silicon Valley Small Theatre Awards 2012: California), Krapp’s Last Tape (Turkey), Uncle Vanya (Norway), Hamletmachine (Vermont), Much Ado About Nothing, The Life of Spiders (World Premiere), Coxinga (New York premiere), and A Man’s A Man (New York), others. Choreographies include Caftan 2011 : Vogue Zaman (Morocco), Strange Weather (New York), and Almost Rapture with Paul Langland (Finalist, VI Choregraphiques Recontres Seine-Saint-Denis); others. He has danced for Alexandra Beller, Sin Cha Hong, Helena Lambert, Paul Langland, Mary Overlie, Stephen Petronio, Aki Sato, Keith Thompson in the US, Europe, and Japan.
Brendan has eighteen years of international experience teaching theatre & dance courses at the university level, including six years at the graduate (Masters) level and eight years in arts administration. Previous long-term appointments include the Yale School of Drama, the New School for Drama, New York University, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School, Danshogskolan (Sweden), Bilkent University (Turkey), and The International Theater Academy Norway, where he served as Rektor from 2008-10. Course subjects include Movement for Actors, Physical Theatre, and Entrepreneurship for Theatre Artists.
In 2010, he founded Ensemble Free Theater Norway, an independent theater collective dedicated to original theatrical work and international collaboration. To date, EFTN has presented new work in 7 countries on four continents.
His articles have been published in English, Norwegian, and Belarusian in Contemporary Theatre Review (UK), Klassekampen, The Nordic Page, and Dagbladet (Norway), Arche (Belarus), and Contact Quarterly Dance Journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Dance/USA, and Dance Magazine. Two of his entries appear in the 4th edition of Rosary O’Neill’s The Actor’s Checklist: Creating the Complete Character, as well as one entry in the bilingual Belarus In Focus: Through the Eyes of International Journalists, for which he won an award in 2012.
He initiated the project Belarusian Dream in collaboration with the Solidarity with Belarus Information Office (Warsaw, Poland): simultaneous performances on 25 March 2014 (Belarusian Freedom Day) by a network of international partner-theatres to highlight censorship and human rights abuses in “the last dictatorship in Europe”.
Originally from California, Brendan has lived in New York City, Chicago, southern Vermont, Turkey, and Norway.
BFA with Honors, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts
MFA, Bennington College
