NEW YORK CITY: Red Bull Theater has announced that Martin Giannini will become executive director, following a board-led search. Giannini, who will be the company’s first executive director, will step into the role this month.
“I am very excited about the opportunity to partner with Martin,” said company founder and artistic director Jesse Berger in a statement. “He brings superb expertise and enthusiasm for our work and mission. He understands our current challenges and opportunities well, and is poised to help us meet them with ambition and pragmatism. As we emerge from the pandemic and envision Red Bull’s next chapter of sharing great classic stories Off-Broadway, I am confident Martin will be a terrific collaborator and excellent co-leader of our company.”
Martin Giannini has served as general manager of the Broadway Dreams Foundation since 2019, with previous nonprofit engagements at Roundabout Theatre Company, Westport Country Playhouse, and Theatre Raleigh. Martin has produced theatre in both New York and London, and received an Olivier Award for the 2012 West End revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He is an alumni of the University of California, Irvine and resides in New York City and Fairfield, Conn., with his family.
“I am so proud to be joining Red Bull Theater at such a pivotal moment in its history, and honored to devote myself to its important mission of preserving and invigorating classic plays for New York theatregoers,” said Giannini in a statement. “As a lifelong arts professional with a special passion for our shared theatrical heritage, I am thrilled to be working in support of Jesse Berger’s bold artistic vision, and helping to guide this organization into its next exciting chapter. While the professional theatre community is facing one of the most challenging landscapes in modern history, I firmly believe that audiences, now more than ever, are hungry for dynamic, inclusive, and substantive work that both draws upon our rich history and helps to explain and elucidate our modern world.”
Red Bull Theater is an Off-Broadway theatre company in New York City, specializing in classical theatre. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull seeks to bring rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. As of 2021, Red Bull Theater had an approximate budget of $705,000.
