Adam Immerwahr

Adam Immerwahr is a director and theater producer. In 2022, he completed his tenure as artistic director of Theater J. He served as the Associate Artistic Director at McCarter Theatre, a Tony Award-winning regional theater in Princeton, NJ. Adam also served as Resident Director at Passage Theatre and the Artistic Director of OnStage, an ensemble of retired Mercer County residents who collect and perform the stories of their community.

At Theater J, Adam led the revitalization of the nation’s premier Jewish theater after it had been met with enormous controversy leading to substantial losses. Within his first season, he led the theater to a balanced budget and continued growth over the coming years. He created and launched Theater J’s Expanding the Canon initiative, raising nearly $200,000 to commission seven racially and ethnically diverse Jewish playwrights to create and develop seven new works of theater that thematically center Jews of Color. He launched the Yiddish Theater Lab, commissioning four new adaptations or translations, producing many readings and workshops of forgotten Yiddish masterpieces, and producing the English-language world premiere of one of the most famous Yiddish classics: Mirele Efros (The Jewish Queen Lear). Adam launched a series of “Classes for Theater Lovers” that brought over $40,000 in income to DC theater artists during the pandemic closures, and many hundreds of adult theater learners. Under Adam’s leadership, Theater J increased its artist compensation substantially and created a culture of ethical, transparent, and candid producing that brought the top tier of DC’s theater artists back to Theater J. Next season, Theater J productions Adam launched will be transferring to Cleveland Play House and touring Michigan. Adam left Theater J in 2022 at the completion of his second contract, with the theater in extraordinary artistic and fiscal health.

At McCarter Theatre, Adam served on the producing team of multiple productions that transferred to Broadway and Off-Broadway, including the world premiere of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (which won the Tony Award for Best Play). Other notable producing credits include the original production of Fiasco Theater's Into the Woods (McCarter Theatre, The Old Globe, the Roundabout, the West End, national tour); the original developmental production of Danai Gurira's Eclipsed, directed by Liesl Tommy (a subsequent Broadway production garnered six Tony Award nominations); and the world premieres of Ken Ludwig's Baskerville and A Comedy of Tenors, Stephen Wadsworth's The Figaro Plays, and Tarell McCraney's Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, as well as world premieres by Edward Albee, John Guare, Marina Carr, Will Power, and Rachel Bonds. Directors whose work he has produced or associate produced include Roger Rees, Nicholas Martin, Rebecca Taichman, Tina Landau, Des McAnuff, Sam Buntrock, Liesl Tommy, John Doyle, Mary Zimmerman, Stephen Wadsworth, Phylicia Rashad, John Kani, Amanda Dehnert, and Aaron Posner.

Adam was a recipient of a 2008 Drama League Directing Fellowship and a member of the Luna Stage Directors’ Lab in 2006-2007. He is the winner of a National Merit Award, the Young Scholar Award, the Weston Award for Directing, and the Brown University Shakespeare Prize. He recently received the NJ Theatre Alliance Applause Award and the Fairleigh Dickinson University / Center for Nonprofits Emerging Nonprofit Leader Award.

Adam has taught classes, masterclasses, and workshops in casting, producing, community-based performance, devised theater, audition technique, and acting at Princeton University, Juilliard, Arcadia University, George Washington University, Rider University, Kean University, Westminster Choir College, Chautauqua Theater, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and others.

As a director, Adam’s credits include international: The Convert (Zimbabwe); Off-Broadway: Missing Celia Rose (SPF 2007, Theatre Row), The Chimes (SPF 2009, The Public Theater); Spirit Sex: A Paranormal Romance (Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC as part of the Going to the River Festival); Bacteria and Ground (The Wild Project, Theater Masters). Regional and NYC: Sleuth (cancelled due to COVID), The Understudy, The Mousetrap, A Christmas Carol (McCarter Theatre); Last of the Red Hot Lovers (Walnut Street Theater - and national tour); Familiar (Woolly Mammoth); Ken Ludwig's Sherwood (Cleveland Play House); Nathan the Wise, Sheltered, The Last Schwartz, Roz and Ray and The Jewish Queen Lear (Theater J); Fires in the Mirror (Theater J and Theatrical Outfit), Hannah and By The Water (Premiere Stages); Love and Communication (winner of the Brown Martin Philadelphia Award), Slippery As Sin, Trenton Lights, and Blood: A Comedy (Passage Theatre); The Possibilities, The Thing About Air Travel, The Kid Who Talked To Penguins (Hangar Theatre); Ground, Some Old Black Man, and Bacteria (Theater Masters); A Little Night Music (Princeton Summer Theater); Know Dog (Luna Stage); and others. Other credits include: Once Upon a Mattress, Measure for Measure; Metamorphoses; Marowitz’s The Shrew; Endgame; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; and Hush: An Interview with America. Adam is a graduate of Brown University, where he majored in Theatre, Speech and Dance, and Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.