In the press, Ethan McSweeny has been described as “the wunderkind with a Midas touch.” After a breakout production of John Logan’s Never the Sinner catapulted him to the New York stage (garnering Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), he made his Broadway with the 2000 revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, Tony Award nomination).

In the decade that has passed, his career has spanned a remarkably diverse body of work that includes more than 60 productions, from world premieres (1001, 100 Saints, and Trinity River Plays among others), to noted productions of classics (from Aeschylus' The Persians to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice to Shaw’s Arms and the Man), to revivals from the American canon (including Miller's A View from the Bridge, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Williams' The Glass Menagerie) to musicals both new and old (Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days, and the upcoming Pirates of Penzance). He has directed on many of the nation’s most prestigious stages including the Guthrie, the Goodman, the Old Globe, the Shakespeare Theatre, the Denver Center, the Alley, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Rep, CenterStage, Pittsburgh Public, George Street Playhouse, San Jose Rep, Westport Playhouse, the Wilma, Primary Stages, Playwrights Horizons, and the National Actors Theatre, among others. In the summer of 2010, he went international with an acclaimed production of Dangerous Liaisons for the celebrated Stratford Festival in Canada.

Mr. McSweeny’s New York direction includes the premieres of Kate Fodor’s Rx (Primary Stages) and 100 Saints You Should Know (Playwrights Horizons), and Jason Grote’s 1001 (p.73), which in a rare occurrence were both chosen among the “Top Ten Plays” of 2007 by Time Out and Entertainment Weekly magazines. Recent national highlights include: the world premiere of Regina Taylor's The Trinity River Plays at the Goodman and the Dallas Theater Center; the world premiere of the stage adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill at the Arena Stage; a Merchant of Venice set on the Lower East Side of New York, and a Much Ado About Nothing set in Cuba (both at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.); critically acclaimed revivals of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at CenterStage (Baltimore City Paper, Best of 2008), A View from the Bridge, and Arms and the Man at the Guthrie; and finally, Major Barbara at the Shakespeare Theatre (Helen Hayes Award nomination).

For the past seven summers, Mr. McSweeny has been co-Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) alongside his colleague Vivienne Benesch, growing the company in artistry, audience, and national impact, while cultivating its reputation as the summer center for training the finest emerging actors in the country. For Chautauqua, he has directed Love's Labor's Lost, Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman, The Just, The Cherry Orchard, All My Sons, Cobb, and the Amphitheatre collaboration with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra of Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, in addition to numerous readings in the New Play Workshop series that he inaugurated in 2005. During his tenure as Artistic Director, CTC has seen attendance grow more than 500% and the work of this company, as both a producer and a cultivator of the finest emerging talent in the nation, is prominently featured in the current PBS documentary Chautauqua: An American Narrative.

Other notable work includes: the landmark National Actor's Theatre production of The Persians featuring Len Cariou, Roberta Maxwell, and Michael Stuhlbarg in a new translation by Ellen McLaughlin, and a subsequent production of the same play in Washington, D.C. starring Helen Carey and Ted van Greithuysen; the world premiere of 1001 at the Denver Center (Ovation Award); the premieres of Cornelia, In This Corner at the Globe (San Diego Critics Circle Award), and Lee Blessing's A Body of Water at both the Globe and the Guthrie (Craig Noel Award for Direction, San Diego Critics Circle Award, and Minneapolis Star-Tribune Award); the musical Chasing Nicolette at the Prince Music Theater (Barrymore Award nomination); the world premiere of Mr. Marmalade at South Coast Rep (OCIE Award); and revivals of Romeo and Juliet and Six Degrees of Separation at the Guthrie (Star-Tribune Award for Direction and Play).

In addition to staging classics by Aeschylus, Albee, Euripides, Miller, Williams, Chekhov, Pinter, Shakespeare, and Shaw, Mr. McSweeny is fortunate to have collaborated on the development of new work by many leading writers in America, including Courtney Baron, Anthony Clarvoe, Cusi Cram, Zayd Dorn, Steven Drukman, Kate Fodor, Richard Greenberg, Paul Grellong, Rinne Groff, Jason Grote, Adam Gwon, Noah Haidle, Julia Jordan, Tony Kushner, Alex Lewin, Ken Lin, Quincy Long, Michael Mitnick, Peter Morris, Octavio Solis, Lloyd Suh, Regina Taylor, and Anna Ziegler, among others.

Long involved in the leadership of arts institutions, in addition to the Chautauqua Theater Company, Mr. McSweeny has served as Associate Artistic Director of the George Street Playhouse, Artistic Advisor to the National Actors Theatre, Resident Director at New Dramatists, and Associate Director of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. He can be heard on NPR as a frequent contributor to the LA Theatre Works audio plays series and currently serves as Treasurer on the Executive Board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, an independent national labor union.

Through no fault or intention of his own, he received the first-ever undergraduate degree in theater and dramatic arts bestowed by Columbia University.

Upcoming assignments in the 2011/2012 season include Much Ado About Nothing for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. (opening December, 2011); the world premiere of Rx by Kate Fodor for Primary Stages in New York City (opening Februrary, 2012); and a revival of The Pirates of Penzance for the Stratford Festival's 60th Anniversary Season (opening May, 2012).