Robert Faires has been active in the Austin arts community since 1980, working as an actor, a director, and a writer on more than 90 productions throughout the city. With the Austin Symphony, he served as narrator for the Butler Pops Concerts The Music of John Williams and Movie Music Magic, and performed speeches from Shakespeare’s Henry V in the Masterworks concert A Shakespearean Evening.

In 2009, he realized a 20-year dream by performing a solo version of Shakespeare’s Henry V that he conceived and adapted. It was revived in 2014 by Austin Shakespeare and Red Then Productions and performed at the 2019 New Orleans Shakespeare Festival. He gave the 2010 Nilsson Lecture on Contemporary Drama at the University of Texas on the creation of that work.

Recent projects include performing as Clarence the Angel and other roles in Penfold Theatre’s It’s a Wonderful Life; guest hosting Entr’acte’s Bar Line cabaret series; playing Ambrogio in Austin Opera’s The Barber of Seville; directing Much Ado About Nothing for Durango Theatreworks in Durango, Colo.; and portraying Oliver Warbucks in TexARTS’ Annie.

He has conducted live public interviews with Stephen Sondheim, David Mamet, Susan Sarandon, Peter Bogdanovich, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, and other prominent figures. He covered Austin’s cultural scene for 35 years, 28 of them in the position of Arts Editor for The Austin Chronicle.

In 2019, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. American Theatre Magazine named him to a list of 12 of the nation's most influential theatre critics, and his writing and criticism have also been recognized with awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.