Steven Maler is the Founding Artistic Director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC). At CSC, he has directed Free Shakespeare on the Boston Common productions since 1996, including Richard III, Love’s Labour’s Lost, King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Coriolanus, All’s Well That Ends Well, Othello, The Comedy Of Errors, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Henry V, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Romeo & Juliet. In collaboration with Boston Landmarks Orchestra, he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring the Overture and Incidental Music of Felix Mendelssohn, as well as concert stagings of The Boys from Syracuse and Kiss Me Kate at Boston’s iconic Hatch Shell. For CSC, he has also directed one-night-only readings of iconic plays featuring Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Paul Rudd, Blair Brown, Tony Shalhoub, Leslie Uggams, David Morse, and Jeffrey Donovan among others. He also conceived and directed Shakespeare at Fenway, an evening of Shakespeare scenes performed at Boston’s iconic Fenway Park, featuring Mike O’Malley, Neal McDonough, Maryann Plunkett, Jay O. Sanders, Kerry O’Malley, Seth Gilliam, Zuzanna Szadkowski, and Jason Butler Harner. In collaboration with Google, he recently adapted and directed a first of its kind sixty-minute virtual reality film of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, entitled Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit, starring Jack Cutmore-Scott, Jay O. Sanders, Brooke Adams, and Faran Tahir.
Other CSC works include Mr. Maler’s critically acclaimed production of Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, the World Premiere of Jake Broder’s Our American Hamlet, and the World Premiere of Robert Brustein’s The Last Will. He directed Péter Eötvös operatic treatment of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (U.S. Premiere) and Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face for Opera Boston, The Turn of the Screw for New Repertory Theatre, Santaland Diaries and Chay Yew’s Porcelain for SpeakEasy Stage Company, Top Girls and Weldon Rising for Coyote Theatre, and The L.A. Plays by Han Ong for American Repertory Theatre. His New York City credits include the New York Musical Theatre Festival production of Without You, written and starring Anthony Rapp. He received the prestigious Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence, as well as for Best Production for Twelfth Night and All’s Well That Ends Well, Outstanding Director, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Best Production, Suburbia; Best Solo Performance, John Kuntz’s Starf***ers (which also won Best Solo Performance Award at New York International Fringe Festival). His feature film “The Autumn Heart”, starring Tyne Daly and Ally Sheedy was in the Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.