Rubén Polendo

Rubén Polendo is artistic director of Theater Mitu; applauded as “one of the ten top, hot companies in New York” and  “exciting…outside the boundaries of standard Western drama” (New York Times). Polendo has written and directed several works with his company including: Apostle Project; The Ramayana; The Mahabharata; The Odyssey. Adaptations include Hamletmachine; The Shakespeare Project; The Noh Cycle; Dhammashok (developed at Sundance); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Patravadi, Thailand); HAIR (Skirball). This past year, after development at Sundance and at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, Mitu premiered DR.C (or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps); An opera in Eight Parts, as well as producing  and touring radically innovative adaptations of Death of a Salesman, Medea and Mother Courage. Polendo’s and Mitu’s work has been presented at various theaters nationally and internationally including: NYTW, The Public, 3LD Arts and Technology, INTAR, Blue Light, Lincoln Center, A.C.T., McCarter, Perseverance, NAATCO, Mark Taper, Alliance, ETC and South Coast Rep. Polendo holds a Biochemistry Degree (Trinity University), an MFA in directing (UCLA-Peter Sellers, Director) and an MA in non-Western theatre (Lancaster, UK) with a residency at the Kalamandalam (India), as well as residencies with Peter Brook, Robert Wilson and Ariane Mnouchkine. Polendo is director of Theater Mitu’s Bangkok and South India Artist Intensives. He and various company members teach Mitu’s Training Methodology (Whole Theater) at several institutions including NYU/Tisch, Juilliard, Bard, CCM, Vassar, BYU and University of Mexico. Polendo is Associate Professor at NYU-Abu Dhabi where he heads the theater program, while continuing to create work with Theater Mitu in the Emirates and in New York. Most recently, Theater Mitu, along with NYU-AD Institute and ADACH produced a site-specific work entitled CHAOS (adaptation of Pirandello’s short stories) on the beaches of Abu Dhabi. This marked the first professional production created and presented in Abu Dhabi.