Benjamin Curns
Guest Director/Fight Director
Benjamin has been an Artistic Associate with the American Shakespeare Center since 2001. During his tenure with ASC, he has served in many different capacities. He has toured the country twice as an actor (Bright Heaven of Invention and Excellent Motion tours) and once as the Company Manager for the Beguile the Rich tour. He has additionally appeared as an actor and musician in nine Actors’ Renaissance Seasons and five Summer/Fall Seasons.
ASC directing credits include Romeo and Juliet; Julius Caesar; Much Ado about Nothing (National Tours); Shakespeare On Ice; ‘Diggers (Blackfriars Conference); Henry IV, Part 2; All’s Well That Ends Well; Othello; The Winter’s Tale; The Tempest; Cymbeline (American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp). Assistant Director credits include The Importance of Being Earnest, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Directing credits outside of ASC include Macbeth (Excellent Motion Shakespeare Company), Arsenic and Old Lace (Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theatre), The Boy (Philadelphia Fringe Festival), and a staged reading of King Lear (PlayMakers Repertory Company/Burning Coal Theatre Company).
Benjamin has directed fights for ASC productions of Macbeth, Cyrano DeBergerac, The Comedy of Errors; Romeo and Juliet; Julius Caesar; Cymbeline; and the national touring productions of Romeo and Juliet; Julius Caesar; Henry IV, Part 1; Hamlet; and Othello.
Fight credits outside ASC include Macbeth (Roust Theatre Company); Superior Donuts (with ASC alum Jeremy West), Henry IV (Live Arts); Tyger’s Heart, King John, The Maid’s Tragedy and others (Mary Baldwin University); Disgraced (PlayMakers Repertory Company); As You Like It (UNC Chapel Hill Kenan Theatre Company).
Benjamin is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, a certified Actor/Combatant with the Society
of American Fight Directors, and a black belt in American Freestyle Karate. He received his MFA in
Acting from The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and his BA in History from SUNY Cortland.