Dr. Derek Goldman is an award-winning international stage director, playwright, producer, festival director, adapter/deviser, curator, published scholar and convener working at the intersection of performance, civic dialogue, and global affairs. He serves as Artistic and Executive Director of The Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics (The Lab), which he co-founded in 2012 with Ambassador Cynthia Schneider with a mission “to humanize global politics through performance.” Under his leadership, The Lab has grown into a unique organization that is both a global destination for students and an expansive network of collaborators around the world, and is recognized for its distinctive thought-leadership and innovation at the intersection of performance, civic dialogue, education, and global affairs.
He is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown with a joint appointment in the School of Foreign Service as Professor of Global Performance, Culture and Politics. In his more than two decades at Georgetown, he has also served as Chair of the Department of Performing Arts and Director of the Theater & Performance Studies Program, and for more than a decade as Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center.
He is director and co-author (with his former student Clark Young) of the celebrated play Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (published as the centerpiece of a special volume by Georgetown University Press). The play was created by The Lab starring Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn, and has been performed to great acclaim Off-Broadway and at leading theaters such as DC’s Shakespeare Theater Company, Berkeley Repertory, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Spoleto Festival, as well as performances in the UK, Spain, four cities in Poland, and more. He also co-directed and co-authored the new feature film version (Remember This), which has received awards at numerous festivals and aired nationally on PBS Great Performances.
Goldman has directed over 100 theatrical productions and has worked regularly as an adapter/playwright at leading Off-Broadway, international, and regional theaters such as Steppenwolf in Chicago; Shakespeare Theater Company, The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Ford's Theater, Lincoln Center, Theater for A New Audience, Berkeley Rep, Baltimore Center Stage, Folger, Everyman Theater, Mosaic, Theater J, Synetic Theater, Segal Center (Montreal), and many others.
He was honored to receive the prestigious President's Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at Georgetown, as well as the Provost’s Award for Innovation in Teaching for his work around the world on In Your Shoes™, a groundbreaking approach he created to counter polarization by using innovative techniques rooted in theatrical performance, dialogue, and deep listening. His In Your Shoes™ workshops have been shared with thousands of participants in diverse settings and contexts around the world, and the approach is now being scaled as part of The Lab’s In Your Shoes Research and Practice Center. This Center convenes interdisciplinary faculty and a global community of practice, and has been embraced in domains as diverse as higher education, medicine, neuroscience, diplomacy, public health, interfaith dialogue, and the arts. Projects have ranged from collaborations with the Global Health Institute and Georgetown’s Prison Scholars Program, to global exchanges with partners in China, Russia, Sudan, and Bangladesh, among others.
In 2024, after years of development using the In Your Shoes methodology, The Lab and Mosaic Theater premiered the acclaimed ensemble-devised production The Art of Care which was named by The Washington Post as one of the top productions of the year. Out of this commitment to performance as a practice of care, he and The Lab have now launched The Art of Care Initiative in partnership with Georgetown’s School of Health, Global Health Institute, Medical Humanities Initiative, MedStar Health, Lombardi Cancer Center, and other partners. The Initiative is dedicated to advancing the idea that art and care are profoundly linked, and that this linkage can lead to more caring systems, better health outcomes, and a more just world.
Goldman serves as a faculty fellow with Georgetown’s Earth Commons Institute, a hub for environmental and sustainability innovation, with whom he is collaborating to create curriculum and develop initiatives at the intersection of the arts and environment.
He has also served as Vice-President of the International Theater Institute, the world's largest performing arts organization, with centers in more than 100 countries, representing the Americas on ITI's Executive Board and Executive Council, and as co-President of the U.S. Center of ITI. He is also a Founding Director of UNESCO’s Global Network of Higher Education in the Performing Arts and produced and launched the Network's first global festival at the 2017 ITI World Congress in Segovia, Spain. He served for six years as a member of the Board of Directors of Theater Communications Group (TCG), and is co-creator of the Global Theater Initiative, a partnership between The Lab and TCG which promotes cross-cultural collaboration and cultivates new strategies to maximize the global theater field’s opportunities and impact.
He finds most rewarding his work supporting, mentoring, convening, and helping to build lasting relationships among emerging and ground-breaking artists from around the world who are working at the intersection of performance, social change, and global politics. Many of these artists, such as the 40 artists from around the world who have been part of the four cohorts to date of Global Lab Fellows, habitually do extraordinary work amidst violence, poverty, and other extreme obstacles. In pursuit of this work, he has been Principal Investigator on over $2 million of major grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, the Ford Foundation. and others to directly support these artists and initiatives. His work at these intersections has brought him in recent years to collaborations in Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Rwanda, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Syria, UAE, UK, Ukraine, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and more.
Goldman was Founding Artistic Director of the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance, a professional theater company which he founded and ran from 1992–2005 in Chicago and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he previously served on the faculty at UNC. StreetSigns was named by the Chicago Sun-Times as "the most exciting company to emerge in Chicago since John Cusack's New Criminals," and by The New York Times as "one of Chicago's top theater companies.”
He holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. His dissertation was advised by the late Dwight Conquergood along with other beloved mentors Frank Galati, Mary Zimmerman and Helene Cixous, and received the National Communication Association's prestigious Outstanding Dissertation Award for his work The Politics and Poetics of Adaptation: Leon Forrest’s Divine Days.
He was previously on the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill where he received the Hettleman Award for Outstanding Scholarly and Artistic Achievement, and the Chapman Family Fellowship for Distinguished Teaching and Scholarship.
He is the author of more than 30 professionally produced plays and adaptations, including work published by Samuel French and produced internationally, and he has directed over 90 productions.
Some artistic highlights include A Streetcar Named Desire at Everyman Theater (Wall Street Journal 10 Best of the Year nationally); Theodore Bikel's Sholom Aleichem: Laughter through Tears, which he developed with legendary performer Bikel and toured for several years internationally after successful runs Off-Broadway (Drama Desk Nomination), and at Theater J in Washington DC;Our Class at Theater J (Helen Hayes Nominated for Outstanding Resident Play), and later in a new translation by Norman Allen at Georgetown; his celebrated productions of George Brant's Grounded at Everyman and remounted at Olney Theater Center and Northern Stage; The Brothers Size at Everyman Theater ( year-end awards including Baltimore Magazine's Best Production of 2011-2012); his world-premiere adaptation of David Grossman's celebrated novel Falling Out of Time (Theater J); his new adaptations of Three Men in a Boat (Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding New Work/ Adaptation), Kafka's Metamorphosis and Lysistrata at Synetic Theater; Once Wild: Isadora in Russia with WordDance Theater (Winner of Multiple DC Metro Dance Awards including Outstanding Group Performance); the World Premiere of Jay O. Sanders' Rwanda epic Unexplored Interior, as the inaugural production of Mosaic Theater; Stones in His Pockets at Baltimore Center Stage; Young Robin Hood (World Premiere) and Eurydice at Round House Theater; book writer for Tales from Odessa: A So-Called Musical which premiered at the Segal Center in Montreal, adapted from the work of Isaac Babel and in collaboration with the celebrated recording artist So-Called (nomination for Montreal English Theater Award ); Clementine in the Lower 9 and bobraucshenbergamerica at Forum Theater; The Glass Menagerie and Begotten, his original work about Eugene O'Neill at Arena Stage (GU partnership); the world premiere of Trayf as well as Winter Miller's In Darfur at Theater J (Helen Hayes Award-winner for Outstanding Lead Performance, Erika Rose); The Dresser, Blackbird and Shipwrecked! at Everyman; As You Like It at the Folger Theater; his adaptation of Studs Terkel's Will the Circle Be Unbroken at Steppenwolf (with David Schwimmer), at Millennium Park in Chicago (with Garrison Keillor) and in North Carolina and DC at Georgetown with Arena Stage (with David Strathairn and Kathleen Chalfant), as well as extensive new work development with Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Steppenwolf, Ford's Theatre, Theater J, Syracuse Stage, Zeitgeist Festival, National New Play Network, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Timeline Theater, Woolly Mammoth, the Source Festival, the Phillips Collection, and others.
Among his published/produced plays and adaptations are Haymarket Eight (with Jessica Thebus) which premiered at Steppenwolf; Right as Rain, a new play about Anne Frank and the Holocaust that toured nationally for 3 years; and numerous award-winning adaptations, all of which he also staged, including A Death in the Family (Jefferson Citation for Best New Work/Adaptation); Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (voted Independent Award for “Best of the Decade” 2000-2009); Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Kaddish for Allen Ginsberg; The Turn of the Screw; Divine Days; Written on the Body, as well as original works on and/or adaptations from Miller, Williams, O'Neill (all with Arena Stage), Lorca, Kafka, Faulkner, and many others. He has collaborated extensively on new work with writers such as Studs Terkel, Helene Cixous, Theodore Bikel, Don DeLillo, Heather Raffo, Allan Gurganus, Leon Forrest, Motti Lerner, Jay O. Sanders, Norman Allen, Masha Obolensky, Tom Minter, Jon Klein, Lindsay Joelle, Dan Dietz, Winter Miller, and many others. He directed stage and film versions of 5 short plays by leading playwrights commissioned by the Phillips Collection in dialogue with Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series.
Other professional directing highlights include his Jeff-Award winning Hamlet; The Seagull; the US Premiere of Helene Cixous' epic The Perjured City, or the Awakening of the Furies; DeLillo's Mao II; Brecht's Antigone; two productions of Lorca's The Public; Twelfth Night; George Brant’s 's long-running comedy hit Night of the Mime; Tales of the Lost Formicans; The Fever; Saul Reichlin’s off-Broadway and internationally-touring hit Sholom Aleichem: Now You're Talking; and Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.
At Georgetown, he has directed a multi-media Hamlet, which was featured at the Performance Studies International Conference in Shanghai, where he traveled with a delegation of students; his World Premiere multimedia play A Child Shall Lead Them: Making The Night of the Hunter, based on the classic 1955 film (a co-production with University of Maryland); The Glass Menagerie and related original works (Elegy for Rose, and The Menagerie Variations) devised from the Tennessee Williams archive, as well as a star-studded concert version of Camino Real in Gaston Hall on Williams' 100th birthday, as part of the Tennessee Williams Centennial festival at GU and Arena Stage; a new adaptation of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author; The Winter's Tale, the DC Premieres of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice and David Hare's Stuff Happens; Sarah Ruhl'’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play; Right as Rain; The Skin of Our Teeth; a new version of Our Town (co-directed with Sarah Marshall) in partnership with Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and a workshop production of his new adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize Winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
He regularly conceives and convenes innovative cross–sector and inter-disciplinary programs. He co-directs the Lab Fellows Program funded by the Mellon Foundation comprised of ten path-breaking artists from around the world. He hosted a delegation from Baghdad University for a month-long residency along with an international convening at Georgetown "Toward an Initiative on Global Performance, Civic Imagination, and Cultural Diplomacy," funded by a Reflective Engagement in the Public Interest grant, which brought together more than 80 leading artists, scholars, and policymakers from around the world, conceived and hosted "Burning To Tell You", a major event at the National Press Club with artists from Belarus, Syria, Iran, around freedom of expression and artists rights. With his Global Theater Initiative colleagues he has also conceived and hosted major global convenings as part of annual TCG Conferences, including Finding Home: Migration, Exile and Belonging which drew artists from more than 25 countries, and annual World Theater Day events with artists from around the world.
In Summer 2010 he led his Georgetown students as the sole US representatives at the UNESCO/ITI World Festival of Theater Schools in Peru, creating the original work In Search of Duende: The Ballad of Federico Garcia Lorca, and led a delegation of students to the festival he directed at the ITI World Congress in Segovia with the original devised performance I Pledge Allegiance, engaging the narratives of immigrant and first-generation students.
As Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center, he produced numerous world premieres, and the nationally-acclaimed Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival which featured over 30 events at Georgetown and Arena Stage. At Georgetown it has been his privilege to host and collaborate with world-class artists such as Edward Albee, Belarus Free Theater; Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka; Dah Teatar from Belgrade, Ajoka Theater from Lahore, Pakistan; the Syria Trojan Women Project; Ping Chong & Company; Freedom Theater from Jenin, Palestine; Boaz Gaon; The Civilians and Michael Friedman; Anna Deavere Smith; Heather Raffo; Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project, Pig Iron; Michael Rohd and Sojourn Theater; the National Theatre of Ghana; Liz Lerman, Rachel Chavkin and the TEAM, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Danny Hoch, Theodore Bikel, John Waters, Michael Kahn, David Henry Hwang; Nilo Cruz; Joy Zinoman, David Strathairn, Kathleen Chalfant, Joe Dowling, Azar Nafisi, Robert O' Hara, Olympia Dukakis, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Sister Helen Prejean, Target Margin Theater, Marcus Gardley, Renegade Theater of Nigeria; the National Theatre of Prague, Svanda Theatre, and many others.
He received his Ph. D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and has developed and teaches courses in Performance and Politics; Performance in Society: Global Performance, Civic Imagination, and Cultural Diplomacy; Directing; Adaptation and Performance of Literature; Acting Shakespeare; The Politics of Comedy; Improvisation for Social Change; Tennessee Wiliams' Worlds; Narrative in Fiction and Film, Performance & Pandemic, and many additional special topics courses. His SFS Centennial Lab Politics and Performance course co-taught with Cynthia Schneider travels to Cambodia annually in collaboration with Cambodian Living Arts.
He has been honored to collaborate closely with Melisande Short-Colomb on the creation of her celebrated solo work Here I Am, about her personal journey as a descendant of the 1838 sale of enslaved persons which helped keep Georgetown afloat. The production was co-created with Jared Mezzocchi, Nikkole Salter and original vocals from Grammy-Nominated musician Somi, and has been performed both at Georgetown and other venues in the US and abroad including in 2025 in Doha as the first performance of its kind ever invited to Qatar. Goldman wrote and directed the original multidisciplinary music-theater work Entwined: Love’s Magicians, about the great Spanish poet/playwright Federico García Lorca and composer Manuel de Falla, which premiered in 2024 at The Kennedy Center with Post Classical Ensemble starring Robin de Jesús and David Strathairn to wide acclaim.
Derek is married to Emily Hanford, a journalist whose podcast Sold a Story on the science of reading has had a transformative impact on educational policy and recently surpassed 15 million downloads. They live in Takoma Park, MD and they have two sons now based in Chicago, the city that still has his heart.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Professor, College - Department of Performing Arts