National Critics Insitute Director Dan Sullivan Retires

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center announced today that Dan Sullivan, faculty member of the National Critics Institute (NCI) since 1977 and its Director since 1999, will retire as head of the long-standing summer program for theater critics. He will remain on the faculty at NCI.

Under Mr. Sullivan's tenure, NCI has enjoyed increased enrollment and high visibility, becoming an integral part of the O'Neill's summer seasons. The 2013 Institute hosted nine Critic Fellows, who were assisted by eleven faculty members, representing the most comprehensive theater criticism assembly in the country. This year's Institute featured innovative workshops on the role of technology in theater criticism, the rise of social media, and the future of the criticism industry.

O'Neill Executive Director Preston Whiteway remarked, "Dan's gentle leadership and hard-driving pursuit of the next generation of theater journalists has formed the core of the O'Neill's National Critics Institute. Dan has taught at NCI since its inception in 1968, and led the program since 1999, guiding the curriculum and students as the journalism business changed dramatically. The program is as necessary today as it was in 1968 - training budding theater journalists, critics, bloggers, and reporters alongside our playwrights, composers, and artists here each summer. Just as our playwrights' work is often early in its development, and benefits from the O'Neill's process, so to do our NCI fellows. Dan's leadership, along with his associates Helene Goldfarb and Mark Charney, has left the program stronger than ever. I am grateful to him and his team, and glad that he will continue with the program as a faculty member."

A theater critic for the Los Angeles Times for twenty years, Mr. Sullivan previously covered Off-Broadway for the New York Times and reviewed the Guthrie Theater's first seasons for the Minneapolis Tribune. He now teaches journalism at the University of Minnesota. The O'Neill welcomes him in his new faculty role with NCI.

An announcement will follow this winter about Mr. Sullivan's replacement as Director of the National Critics Institute.

About the O'Neill: Founded in 1964, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is the country's preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for American theater. In the bold tradition of its namesake Eugene O'Neill - four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and America's only playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - the O'Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and to more than 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O'Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, and major regional theaters.

Recipient of a 2010 Tony Award for Regional Theatre and 1979 Tony Award for Theatrical Excellence, O'Neill programs include the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Critics Institute, National Puppetry Conference, Cabaret & Performance Conference, and National Theater Institute (NTI). NTI offers intensive theater training programs for academic credit, including the Moscow Art Theater Semester (MATS), a semester of study abroad, and six-week summer program Theatermakers.

The O'Neill owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage as a museum open to the public. The childhood summer home of Eugene O'Neill, the Cottage is a National Historic Landmark.

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