Artistic Director/ Founder/ General Manager
Brian McKnight
Brian earned his BFA from Wright State University and his MFA from The Theatre School at DePaul University, Chicago. He appeared as Tom in The Glass Menagerie in Kettering, England, in a production for which he also served as director. As a Resident Artist with the Human Race Theatre in Dayton, Ohio, he performed roles in Take Me Out, Rounding Third, The Tempest, The Underpants, Crimes of the Heart, and The Dazzle. Other past roles include the title role in Richard III, Iago in Othello, Compte de Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac, and Hortensio in Taming of the Shrew. Past directing credits include The Glass Menagerie, Our Town, All My Sons, The Cripple of Inishmaan, An Experiment with an Air Pump, Footfalls: An Evening of short plays by Samuel Beckett, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Harvey and The Tragedie of MacBeth. In 2013, Brian worked as director, adaptor and sound designer for Zoot Theatre Company’s inaugural summer series at the Dayton Art Institute directing productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dr. Faustus, and The Tempest. Recent Chicago credits include Life of Galileo (u/s) with Remy Bumppo and Jerusalem (u/s) at Profiles Theatre and Spooky Shakes with the Shakespeare Project of Chicago. A recognized actor/combatant by the Society of American Fight Directors, Brian’s poem/biography of John Lennon appears in the book Writing with Passion by Tom Romano. His third album of original songs by his one-man band The Baker Street Irregulars, Survival Instincts, a pop/rock song cycle describing his battle with Hodgin’s Lymphoma Cancer, is available March 26, 2021 on all platforms. Brian was the lead faculty in performance for eight years in Sinclair Community College’s Department of Theatre and Dance, while simultaneously teaching as an adjunct professor of theatre in Wright State University’s Department of theatre, Dance & Motion Pictures. He taught English as a Second Language at Kaplan International Schools, as well as teaching as an adjunct at The Theatre School at DePaul University. From 2005-2016, Brian was a member of Actor’s Equity Association. Currently he is an actor/director with The Defamation Experience, a nationally touring show exploring race, gender, power and bias through the lens of a mock trial, produced by Canamac Productions.