Paul Walsh

Paul Walsh joined the faculty of the David Geffen School of Drama in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism in fall 2008. Prior to coming to Yale, he taught courses in dramaturgy, theater history, and dramatic literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He served as senior dramaturg at the American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco) from 1996 to 2005.

His translations of plays by Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and John Gabriel Borkman) have been produced at such theaters as the Yale Repertory Theatre, the American Conservatory Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre, People’s Light and Theatre Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Stratford Festival, among others. His new translation of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt will premiere in fall 2027 at the Alley Theatre in Houston. His translations of August Strindberg’s five Chamber Plays were published by Exit Press in 2012 after premiering at San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater, which also produced his translation of Strindberg’s A Dreamplay in May 2016. With Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, he collaborated on such award-winning productions as Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, 1789, Don Juan Giovanni, Germinal, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Professor Walsh served as artistic director of the New Harmony Project, a new play development residency program located in southern Indiana, from 2006 to 2012.

He has published essays and articles in The Production Notebooks, Re-interpreting Brecht, Strindberg’s Dramaturgy, Theatre Symposium, Essays in Theatre, Studia Neophilologica, Canadian Theatre Review, and Contemporary Literary Criticism Yearbook. He received his PhD from the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama at the University of Toronto.