PHILIP BOEHM Artistic Director
Upstream Theater’s program is guided by founding Artistic Director Philip Boehm, whose career zigzags across languages and borders, artistic disciplines and cultural divides. As a theater director fluent in several languages he has staged dozens of professional productions at theaters in Poland, Slovakia, and the United States. As a dramatist his produced plays include Mixtitlan, Soul of a Clone, Alma en venta, The Death of Atahualpa, and Return of the Bedbug. For this work he has received awards from the Mexican-American Fund for Culture and the NEA. Locally he has received Kevin Kline Awards both as a director and as a playwright.
He is also the author of more than thirty translations of novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Nobel laureate Herta Müller, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, and Hanna Krall. For his work as a translator he has received prizes from a number of institutions including the American Translators Association, the U.K. Society of Authors, the Polish Cultural Institute, the Goethe Institute, PEN USA, the Austrian Ministry of Culture, and the Texas Institute of Letters, as well as fellowships from the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Originally from Texas, Mr. Boehm studied at Wesleyan University (CT), Washington University in St. Louis, and the State Academy of Theater in Warsaw, Poland. He is a frequent invited speaker and has worked as a guest artist at several universities. He has also served on juries for literary prizes both in the US and abroad, and has published reviews and other articles in various journals including American Theatre and The New York Times.