Since several years, Sam Gold is regarded as one of the hottest directors in New York, where he was born in 1978. He took directing classes at the famous Juilliard School. In his early years, he was also active as an actor. He works on Broadway as well as Off-Broadway. Gold built his career on collaborations with young, upcoming authors. The reason: ‘I think it is wonderful to be able to work with writers while their play is still developing. It is very exciting to be at the beginning of the process with them. When everything still has to be formed.’ During the past few years, he has been directing classic plays as well, including Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Gold: ‘When I direct a classic play, I am not very interested in bringing back the context in which the plays were originally performed. That is because of my experience with new plays. I work for the audience that is in the theatre today. The challenge is to make old plays interesting to a new audience.’

He himself sums up his way of directing as minimalistic. He won an Obie Award for best Off-Broadway directing for Circle Mirror Transformation by the young American playwright Annie Baker. Gold’s debut on Broadway was in 2011 with Seminar by Theresa Rebeck: For the Roundabout Theatre, he directed Hollywood stars Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in 2014. The musical Fun Home, which he made for the Public Theatre, was showered in awards and is now performed on Broadway. Sam Gold is resident director at the Roundabout Theatre Company. With his staging of The glass menagerie – the play had been on his wish list for a while – he will be working outside of the US for the first time.

Sam Gold about The glass Menagerie

‘I was in my teens when I saw The glass menagerie for the first time. I recognized myself in Tom back then. In his search for identity and freedom. In his longing for a life as a poet. In the jail he lived in. In him, I recognized the fears and the dreams of every young American man. The play directly addressed me. Now that I am reading it again twenty years later, I am the father of a daughter and for me it is not so much the play about Tom anymore, but more about Amanda, whom I don’t see as the slightly comical, bossy mother. It surprises me that I recognize myself in her now, in her tormented love for her children. My bond with the play is still as strong as it used to be, but it is very different.

At the time, the poetic language and the ingenious form appealed to me strongly. But now I see that is is also a very naturalistic play. With great subtlety and eye for detail, it provides a view on a family in St. Louis during the late 1930s. I find it interesting to research the poetic language and the banality of the environment at the same time. I am really looking forward to bringing this fragile, fearless and harrowing autobiographical view of an artist on his own life and family to the stage.’