Peter Sellars

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For the British actor of a similar name, see Peter Sellers.

Peter Sellars

Peter Sellars (born 1957) is a leading American theater director, renowned for his modern stagings of classical operas and plays. Sellars is professor of World Arts and Culture at U.C.L.A. where he teaches Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action.

Sellars was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Harvard University, graduating in 1981. As an undergraduate, he performed a puppet version of Wagner's Ring cycle, and directed a minimalist production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, with mature birch trees on the stage apron at Loeb Drama Center and Chopin Nocturnes played on a concert grand piano seen through a suspended gauze box set. Sellars' production of Antony and Cleopatra in the swimming pool of Harvard's Adams House brought press attention well beyond campus, as did the subsequent techno-industrial production of King Lear which included a Lincoln Continental on-stage and ambient musical moods by the Steel Cello Ensemble. In his senior year, he staged a production of Handel's Orlando at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, which thanks to its highly original modern staging brought him to national attention. After graduating, he studied in Japan, China, and India.

In 1983 and 1984, Sellars served as director of the Boston Shakespeare Company. In 1983 he received a MacArthur Foundation award. In 1984, he was named director and manager of the American National Theater in Washington, D.C. at the age of 26, a post he held until 1986.

During his years in Washington, Sellars staged extraordinary productions of Count of Monte Cristo, the James O'Neill version, a production featuring Richard Thomas, Patti Lupone, David Warrilow, Zakes Mokae, and many other outstanding performers. The production had a set design by George Tsypin, with costumes by Dunya Ramicova, and lighting by James F.Ingalls. He also directed productions of Idiot's Delight by Robert Sherwood and Sophocles's Ajax, as adapted by Robert Auletta.

Sellars subsequently staged a series of Mozart's operas, Cosi Fan Tutte, (set in a diner on Cape Cod), The Marriage of Figaro (set in a luxury apartment in New York City's Trump Tower), and Don Giovanni (set in New York City's Spanish Harlem), in collaboration with Emmanuel Music and its Artistic Director, Craig Smith. The productions were met with great critical acclaim, were televised by PBS, and were later revived in Europe.

Sellars's first feature film, The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, was a silent color film starring Joan Cusack, Peter Gallagher, Ron Vawter, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He was also featured in Jean-Luc Godard's film of King Lear, which he co-scripted.

Sellars has been invited to the Salzburg and Glyndebourne Festivals, where he has mounted productions of various 20th century operas, notably Olivier Messiaen's St. François d'Assise, Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, and, with choreographer Mark Morris, the premiere of John Coolidge Adams' and Alice Goodman's Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. Other projects in which he has been involved include stagings of Handel's oratorio Theodora, Stravinsky's The Story of a Soldier with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, I Looked at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky and Peony Pavillion.

In 1998, Sellars was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his work combining European and American cultural traditions in opera and theatre.

One of Sellar's closest musical associates is the composer John Adams.

Most recently, Sellars directed John Adams' Dr. Atomic for the San Francisco Opera. This opera about the development of the atomic bomb received mixed reviews. In August, 2006 he directed a staged performance of Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York; the pre-concert discussions were about contemporary slavery and the prospect of abolishing it, as well as Mozart's egalitarianism and opposition to slavery. In late 2006, Sellars also organized the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, Austria as Artistic Director (The festival was part of Vienna Mozart Year 2006).

Sellars has been no stranger to controversy, often criticized for straying too far from the composer's intention. György Ligeti was deeply upset at Sellars's 1997 production of his Le Grand Macabre. On the other hand, Kaija Saariaho has stated that Sellars's design for her 2000 opera L'amour de loin was in harmony with her imagination of the set.