Michael Paller

Michael Paller was resident dramaturg and Director of Humanities at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco from 2005-2018. He was the dramaturg for over 80 productions and workshops and also served as one of the Heads of Faculty in its esteemed MFA Program in Acting. He began his professional career as literary manager at Center Repertory Theatre (Cleveland), then worked as a play reader and script consultant for Manhattan Theatre Club and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and has since been a dramaturg for George Street Playhouse, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Barrington Stage Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, and others. He dramaturged the Russian premiere of Tennessee Williams’s Small Craft Warnings at the Sovremennik Theater in Moscow. Paller is the author of A Five-Act Play:  50 Years of A.C.T. (Chronicle Books 2017), Williams in an Hour (Smith & Kraus 2010), and Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth Century Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He has also written theater and book reviews for the Washington Post, Village Voice, Newsday, and Mirabella magazine. He recently adapted the text for the San Francisco Symphony’s multimedia presentation of Peer Gynt. Before his arrival at A.C.T., he taught at Columbia University and the State University of New York at Purchase. He is a graduate of Syracuse and Columbia Universities.