Biography
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Ethan Heard is a director of opera, musicals and plays. He is the founding co-artistic director of Heartbeat Opera, which creates radical adaptations of classic opera for the 21st century. His recent production of Beethoven's Fidelio updated the story to the Black Lives Matter era, and featured more than one hundred singers in six prison choirs across four states. His collaborations with institutions like The Public, Lincoln Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, and The O'Neill have received rave reviews in the New York Times, New Yorker, and Opera News. In 2017, he served as resident director of China's first jukebox musical, Jay Chou's The Secret.
As a Yale student, Heard sang in the Whiffenpoofs and served as artistic director of Yale Cabaret, where he began the beloved “Yale School of Drag” tradition. In 2009, he co-conceived and directed The Gay Ivy, a music theater piece responding to the controversy following a cover story in the Yale Alumni Magazine entitled “Why They Call Yale the Gay Ivy.”
Heard teaches acting and directing at the Yale School of Drama, the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and Princeton University. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Board of Advisors of the Yale School of Drama. He joined the YAA Board of Governors in 2018.
