William Bourke

Experience

Lir Academy Training

• MFA Theatre Producing - 2026

Other Experience

William Burke is a playwright, curator, and director based in Brooklyn. His productions include the food was terrible (The Bushwick Starr), Is it Supposed to Last? (PlayCo), Help Me Draw Your Feelings? (The Brick), PIONEERS! #goforth (JACK), COMFORT DOGS: Live from the Pink House (JACK), FURRY! (JACK), FURRY!/LA FURIA! (The Bushwick Starr), Untitled American Flag Craft Project (The Brick), and Variations on The Main (JACK). With Target Margin Theater, his work includes I Made a Mistake, EXPLODITY!, and DAY!Night?fuck... (JACK and The Staller Center at Stony Brook University).

His plays have been developed or presented at NACL, New York Theatre Workshop, The Black Swan Lab at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, All For One, The Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place (Little Theatre), The Prelude Festival at CUNY Graduate Center, and CATCH.

As a director, William has collaborated with artists including Modesto “Flako” Jimenez, Haruna Lee, Maya Lawson, Brian Lawlor, and many others. Most recently, he directed a collection of work for Performing Arts Hub Norway at La MaMa. He studied playwriting at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman, Anne Washburn, and Erin Courtney.

William is the Head Curator of The Starr Reading Series at The Bushwick Starr, Co-Chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab alongside Jackie Sibblies Drury, and was Co-Curator of Little Theatre at Dixon Place (2017–2019). He has taught at Cornish College of the Arts, Primary Stages and Stony Brook University. His podcast series, Pep Talks for a New World, is available on all major platforms.

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