Robert Brustein is one of the most distinguished and influential figures of the American theatre. A prominent author, critic, producer, playwright and educator, he founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remains a Creative Consultant. Under his direction, these two theatres and their affiliated training programs have produced generations of prominent actors, directors, playwrights and designers, and exerted a profound influence on American theatre culture. His critical works on theatre, including the iconic The Theatre of Revolt: Studies in modern drama from Ibsen to Genet are classics of contemporary theatre writing and required reading for theatre students all over the world.

Brustein has been the theatre critic for The New Republic since 1959. He also comments on politics for the Huffington Post. Brustein is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University in Boston. He was awarded the Gann Academy Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts in 2005, and received the U.S. National Medal of Arts in 2010 from President Obama. He was elected to the Players Club Hall of Fame in 2011. He created numerous plays such as Demons, Nobody Dies on Friday, The Face Lift, and his Shakespeare Trilogy The English Channel, Mortal Terror. His original production of The Last Will is a featured presentation of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival 2013.