Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson is an American stage and screen director working extensively on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at the nation's leading resident theaters.

He made his screen directorial debut with the 2014 Lifetime/Ostar television film adaptation of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, which was nominated for two 2014 Emmy Awards and six 2015 NAACP/Image Awards—including Outstanding Television Movie – as well as a DGA Award for Outstanding Direction of a Movie or Mini-Series for Television. The film won three 2015 NAACP/Image Awards; the Black Reel Award for Outstanding TV Movie; and the Gracie Allen Award for Outstanding Ensemble Cast (in addition to Tyson and Underwood, the cast included Keke Palmer, Vanessa Williams and Clancy Brown).

Showing Roots was his first indie film produced by Michael Mailer Films in association with Bill Haber—starred Uzo Aduba, Maggie Grace, Elizabeth McGovern, Adam Brody and Cicely Tyson. It won Best Narrative Film awards at the 2015 Bahamas and 2016 Maryland International Film (Hagerstown) Festivals, and was subsequently acquired by Lifetime for broadcast in May 2016.

On Broadway, Wilson directed the 2013 Tony Award winning revival of The Trip to Bountiful starring Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr, Vanessa Williams and Condola Rashad. Other Broadway productions include the 2012 Tony nominated revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (starring James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen, John Larroquette, Eric McCormack, John Stamos, Kristin Davis, and Michael McKean); the Tony nominated Best Plays Dividing the Estate (starring Elizabeth Ashley and Gerald McRaney); and Enchanted April (starring Jayne Atkinson and Molly Ringwald).

Off-Broadway, he directed the 2015 Signature revival of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy starring Richard Thomas, which was subsequently filmed for television and broadcast in 2016 on Theater Close-Up by WNET 13 and BroadwayHD. In 2010, he received Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his direction of Foote’s three-part, nine-hour epic The Orphans’ Home Cycle.

Internationally, he directed both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America for the 1995 Venice Biennale.

Recent projects including the American Repertory Theatre revival of The Night of the Iguana starring Bill Heck, Dana Delaney, James Earl Jones, and Amanda Plummer (2017); CTG/Ahmanson Theater's Los Angeles premiere of Grey Gardens: The Musical starring Betty Buckley and Rachel York (2016); and the Alley Theatre workshop of the new musical Tender Mercies (2018).

Treasurer of SDC since 2015, Wilson was Artistic Director from 1998-2011 of Hartford Stage, where he commissioned and developed the Pulitzer Prize winning Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes.