Ernest
Zulia is professor emeritus
and founding director of the Kennedy Center award-winning Hollins Theatre Institute at
Hollins University. Zulia’s stage adaptation of Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
has had more than 3,000 productions around the world. The holiday sequel,
Uh-Oh, Here Comes Christmas, has
received hundreds of productions as well.
He has collaborated with Broadway composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz
on multiple occasions, including the creation of the musical revues Magic to Do and Day by Day, and the American
premiere of Children of Eden, which
he also directed. Zulia adapted and co-created the stage adaptation of U.S. Poet
Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s
Ophelia, which was honored with a Kennedy Center Award. Zulia has directed
scores of plays, musicals and operas. He is the former associate artistic director
of Mill Mountain Theatre, where he played a central role in the nationally renowned
Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works. He also served as co-artistic director of
Highlands Playhouse and has directed at dozens of professional theatres around the
U.S. and internationally, including the Barter Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Actors Theatre
of Louisville, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Asolo Repertory Theatre. He
served as artistic director of the International Theatre Laboratory of Crete in
2001, which brought artists from five countries together to explore an international
theatre language, and was an artistic associate at Chicago’s award-winning Apple
Tree Theatre, where he was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award. He is the recipient
of an ATHE Award, multiple Kennedy Center Awards, The Perry F. Kendig Award and
the Betsy Green Grubbs Award. He holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre and English
from SUNY Geneseo and a master’s degree in directing from Northwestern University.
He is a member the Dramatists Guild and the Stage Directors and Choreographers
Society.