Travis Preston


Travis Preston is an American director and theater artist known for his staging of classical and contemporary operas and plays. He is the Artistic Director of the CalArts Center for New Performance and Dean of the CalArts School of Theater. His notable works include Prometheus Bound, The Master Builder, Brewsie and Willie, Macbeth and King Lear.

Background

Preston was born in September 1957 in East Chicago, Indiana. He applied for Yale School of Drama while working on his Ph.D. in psychology Indiana University. He began his career by directing Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound in 1980 at Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny in Poland.

Career

In 2017, Preston directed Fantômas: Revenge of the Image and staged it at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China. He also directed and produced Sam Shepard’s Buried Child for the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre.
In 2013, Preston revisited Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, staging it at the Getty Villa at the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman outdoor Amphitheater. For the play, he and set designer Efren Delgadillo Jr, employed a 23-foot-tall rotating steel wheel symbolizing time and representing the protagonist being bound to a mountaintop, as per the Greek tragedy.
Preston was appointed as the Artistic Director of the CalArts Center for New Performance in 2005 and Dean of the CalArts School of Theater in August 2010. In the same year, he directed Ibsen's The Master Builder at the Almeida Theatre in London, starring Gemma Arterton and Stephen Dillane.
In 2005, Preston directed Stephen Dillane in the popular Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth . In the play, he explored the inner landscape of Macbeth's soul and staged this one performer drama in a minimalist set at REDCAT in Disney Hall. The play was also performed at the Almeida Theater in London and at the Sydney and Adelaide Festivals in Australia.
Preston has been teaching faculty at universities and theater training programs including The Yale School of Drama, Columbia School of the Arts, New York University, the National Theater School of Denmark, Indiana University, Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, and Harvard University.

Notable work

In 2006, Preston was awarded Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.