Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Acting Company National Tour, 2015

I directed a 90m cutting / adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth as part of the 2015 Acting Company toured.  It was presented at the Guthrie Theater, the Pearl Theater, as well as in spaces across the midwest and northeast.

Bones in the Basket (an evening of Russian fairy tales)

The Araca Project, 2014

Bones in the Basket was originally devised by an ensemble of actors, dramaturge, and designers for the Yale Cabaret.  It was produced again in an updated form Off-Broadway as part of the Araca Project.

Eurydice by Jean Anouilh

Iseman Theatre, Yale School of Drama

Eurydice was my thesis production at YSD, an uncut production of Anouilh's contemporary reimagining of the Orpheus myth that sets it in a train station in France in between the two world wars.

the droll {OR, a Stage-Play about the END of theatre}

by Meg Miroshnik

The Iseman Theatre, YSD 2009

the droll was originally written by Meg during our second year of grad school, and staged as a small scale production.  It has since gone on to numerous revisions and updates as it receives professional workshops.

Bones in the Basket (an evening of Russian fairy tales)

Good Belly, 2013

Another video from Bones in the Basket, this time in a small intermediary workshop done in 2013.

The Phoenix adapted from the short story by Isobelle Carmody

Yale Summer Cabaret, 2010

The Phoenix is a short story by Isobelle Carmody following the tragic events surrounding three teenagers on a beach in Australia as they explore the lines between fantasy and reality.  A small ensemble of actors and I developed it for a theatrical production as part of the Yale Summer Cabaret in 2010.

Associate Artistic Director:  2016 - Present                                                                                I am currently the Associate Artistic Director of The Acting Company.  My work centers on season planning, line producing, overseeing our new work development workshops, and overseeing our educational tours.

Staff Repertory Director:  2012 - 2015
I have served as the Staff Repertory Director for The Acting Company for the past two seasons.  Assisting directors like Dan Rothenberg and John Rando, I was the director on each of the national tours and in addition to assisting in creating the pieces I toured with them around the country to adapt them to each new and unique venue.  For the 2015 season I am directing a production of MACBETH.

For more information about the 2015 season CLICK HERE.

for information about The Acting Company: www.theactingcompany.org

Artistic Director:  Summer 2011
I served as Artistic Director of the Yale Summer Cabaret's 2011 season.  Working with my partners Tara Kayton (Producer) and Elliot Quick (Associate Artistic Director) we produced a season of Shakespeare.  Three productions running in rotating repertory and using a single ensemble of 10 performers.

for information about the current summer cabaret season: www.summercabaret.org

Co-Artistic Director (along with Christopher Mirto):  2009 - 2010
I served as co-artistic director of the Yale Cabaret's 42nd season (2009-2010).  Along with my fellow artistic director Christopher Mirto and Managing Director Alyssa Anderson we produced a season of 20 works of theater produced by MFA students of the Yale School of Drama.
for information about the current Yale Cabaret season: www.yalecabaret.org

Company Member, Production Manager, Artistic Producer:  2003 - 2013
I have been a company member of the renowned Chicago theater company the Hypocrites since 2003.  Over the course of that time I served the company as Production Manager and Associate Producer and worked on over 15 productions with the company.  Even now I consider this company to my artistic home.

for more information about the hypocrites: www.the-hypocrites.com

THEATRE ARTS CENTER - Conservatory Director: 2012-2015
For the last four years I have spent a month each summer directing a show at the Theatre Arts Center's NYC summer conservatory program.  We take a group of high school students, offer them acting classes in the morning, and their afternoons are spent rehearsing a play with me.  So far, I have directed: Rose Mark'd, Bones in the Basket, Metamorphoses, and The Arabian Nights with them.

for more information about Theatre Arts Center: http://www.theatreartscenter.com/new-york

about THE FOURTH GRADERS PRESENT AN UNNAMED LOVE SUICIDE by Sean Graney

produced by The Hypocrites @ 59e59

• "By the shattering conclusion of this unusual work, it has achieved its own kind of poetry.  Imagine Harold Pinter as a 9-year old, and you get something of the ideas."  - New York Times: (Click here to read whole story)  
• "The Fourth Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide" has a cold, merciless beauty. It heightens the suffering of its elementary-aged characters until every lunchroom taunt becomes a stylized assault, and the result is both sumptuous and brutal." - Variety: (Click here to read whole story)  
• "Brain creates a hypnotizing effect by staging many scenes as if they are happening underwater. The sluggishness only intensifies eruptions of cruelty, which are played with high speed, jerky movements and tortured screams." - Variety: (Click here to read whole story)
• "In Love-Suicide, part of 59E59's "GoChicago" series, playwright Graney, director Devin Brain, and the adept company have crafted an idiosyncratically clever one-act, as precisely tooled as a Swiss music box." - Village Voice (Click here to read whole story)
• "Delivery is everything, and The Hypocrites really have that down cold in this startling production. If their goal really is to make us see theater is a different light, then they've succeeded." - New Theatre Corps (Click here to read whole story)  

about Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Acting Company, 2015 National Tour

• "If only more revivals of Shakespeare could learn to be as daring as this." - David Gordon, TheaterMania.com (Click here to read whole story)  

• "As rare as it is to refer to a Shakespearean play as succinct, The Acting Company’s production of Macbeth is just that, paring down the five-act tragedy to an extended one-act play.  Despite some contradictory choices, The Acting Company brings an urgency to life on stage, and explores long-lasting themes with new eyes."  -  Jamie Rosler, thepublicreviews.com   (Click here to read whole story

• "This ninety minute “Macbeth” delivers the Bard’s iconic tragedy with explosive energy and is performed to perfection by a resplendent cast.  Think “House of Cards” on steroids and the image created begins to match the reality of what the Acting company has accomplished with this 'Macbeth.'" - David Roberts, onstageblog.com   (Click here to read whole story)  

about ROSE MARK'D QUEEN (an adaptation of Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III)

Yale Summer Cabaret Shakespeare Festival, 2011

• "To put it simply: you haven’t seen anything like Rose Mark’d Queen. And once you have, you’ll want to see it again." - New Haven Review: (Click here to read whole story) 
• "As a director, Brain, who was the Co-Artistic Director of the challenging 2009-10 Yale Cabaret Season, knows the Cab space well and pitches his production to the qualities that can make Cab shows such involving—and at times alienating—experiences. Now he’s back with a play that illuminates the British monarchy of the Wars of the Roses period in the 15th century as a blood-boltered tale of bravery and betrayals, of back-stabbings and battles, of lusts and jests and thrusts at the vitals. It’s stirring stuff.  And marvelously, memorably entertaining." - New Haven Review: (Click here to read whole story) 
• "Rose Mark’d Queen is playful in every sense. It’s full of plays, obviously. But it doesn’t overburden itself. Just when one character starts to seem too prominent, the whole show shifts to fresh terrain. The show not only appreciate the kidlike impulses of world leaders, it respects short attention spans. This purposely impertinent pageant of the past, fueled by both youthful fervor and intellectual precocity, deserves to have a future. Anyone who can collapse five of Shakespeare’s history plays into 150 minutes or so, with only five actors, deserves to have regional theaters beating a path to his door." - Christopher Arnott: 

about Erebus and Terror (the Legend of the Franklin Expedition)

Yale Cabaret, 2011

• "How do they do it? How does the Yale Cabaret take a story of utter desperation—the doomed expedition of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, under the command of Sir John Franklin, in search of the Northwest Passage in the Arctic Ocean in 1845—and make an entertaining evening of it?" - New Haven Review: (Click here to read whole story)
•  "The show opens on a lone sailor performing a simple elegy for the ill-fated Franklin expedition, which disappeared while seeking the Northwest Passage. As his voice is accompanied by an increasing number of unseen voices, the song seems to evoke the spirits of the lost souls.  (...)  Watching the play, one feels as though she is already at the wake (or the Irish wake at times) looking back on the experience, as if the audience is a ghostly presence observing the downfall of the Franklin expedition." - Yale Daily News: (Click here to read whole story)  

about Bones in the Basket (an evening of Russian fairy tales)

Yale Cabaret, 2009

• "whether riotous or occasionally sluggish and amatuerish, when the actors finish each bit by yelling and leaping about, you feel their sense of party-hearty accomplishment and cheer right along. These are tales told by villagers (for the extended village that is the Yale Cabaret), full of sound and fury, signifying more than meets the eye." - New Haven Advocate: (Click here to read whole story)