Michael Gene Sullivan is an actor, director, and award-winning playwright based in San Francisco.
Michael’s plays have been produced at theaters throughout the United States, in Greece, Germany, Scotland, The Netherlands, Spain, Columbia, Argentina, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, as well as at the Melbourne International Arts Festival (Australia), the International Festival of Verbal Art (Berlin), The Spoleto Festival, (Italy), and in China at The Hong Kong Arts Festival.
For the past 22 years Michael has been Resident Playwright for the Tony and OBIE award-winning (and despite its name never, ever silent) San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he has written or co-written over 30 plays. He is also an alum of the Playwrights Foundation, a Playwriting Fellow of Djerassi Arts Center, and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow.
Michael’s non-Mime Troupe plays include the critically-acclaimed SIGN MY NAME TO FREEDOM - THE UNHEARD SONGS OF BETTY REID SOSKIN, THE GREAT KHAN, his award-winning all-woman political farce RECIPE, his activist adaptation of Dickens' Christmas Carol RED CAROL, his one person show, DID ANYONE EVER TELL YOU - YOU LOOK LIKE HUEY P. NEWTON?, and his stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, which opened at Los Angeles' Actors' Gang Theatre under the direction of Academy Award winning actor Tim Robbins. 1984 has been produced nationally and internationally, and published in the United States, Canada, and Spain. 1984 is currently being performed in Kiev, Ukraine, in its sixth language.
For ten years Michael was a regular contributor to Huffingtonpost.com, one of the foremost political sites on the internet. He has spoken politically at events throughout the Bay Area, and at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. He has guest lectured on artistic activism at Yale University, and has taught and lectured on playwriting, play creation at Stanford University, The National Theatre Conservatory, Trinity College, Dartmouth College, University of Southern California, University of California at Humboldt, New Colleges of San Francisco and Santa Rosa, the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, and was Adjunct Faculty at the University of San Francisco. In 2018 Michael began teaching playwriting for the American Conservatory Theater's Studio A.C.T, and for the past 15 years has been principal teacher for the San Francisco Mime Troupe's acclaimed Young California Writer's Project, which places a professional playwright/teacher in class for 10 weeks. Michael mentors student writers as they create their own one-act plays, which are produced with professional actors and directors in a one-night festival.
Michael and his wife, Velina Brown, were also profiled in American Theatre Magazine.
For Michael's full theatre bio click here.