BIOGRAPHY

I am open to collaborating with composers and producers for new operas, oratorios, plays, audio dramas, and adaptations of older operas.  

Alan Olejniczak is an opera librettist and playwright based in San Francisco. His operas include Atlas of Remote Islands (2023) and Unbound (2021), with music by Nathan Hall; Death of Ivan Ilych (2021), with music by John Young; and On Our Way (2024), a short comic opera by Nathan Wasner. Alan also created a new English opera adaptation with Grant Preisser of Hector Berlioz's Beatrice + Benedict (2025) for Opera Orlando. In 2023, Alan premiered his first oratorio, Yosef and the Counseling Angel, with music by Cole Thomason-Redus, and his music-drama Concerto with The Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma in partnership with The Oklahoma City Philharmonic. Alan and Stephanie Fleischmann worked with Cape Town Opera to teach Staging Stories, a libretto writing workshop. He mentored three libretists: Nona Zuri, Lebogang Mogashoa, and Sibuyiselo Dywili, who later presented their original work at the SHORTS festival in March 2025.  

This May, his short electronic opera Petrov, music by Sergey Nesterov, will receive a workshop production with Synchromy at The Wende Museum in Culver City, CA. ​In 2024, Synchromy also presented a workshop of his opera Midnight to Midnight, with music by Dante de Silva, at Sony Studios during the World Opera Forum and the Opera America Conference in Los Angeles.

Alan is also a Resident Writer for The Proscenium, a London-based online theatre company. Their first season features his plays Next of Kin and Helt Texas and an adaptation of A Christmas Carol written with David Ricardo-Pearce. 
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Artist residencies are an important part of Alan's writing practice. Alan was the Artist in Residence for Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park and the first playwright ever selected by the National Parks Arts Foundation. His other artist residencies span the globe, including Micro Galleries in Pātan, Nepal; Nes Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland; Nocefresca in Milis, Sardinia; Château d'Orquevaux in France, and the prestigious The Arctic Circle Residency, where he sailed the icy waters around Svalbard for two expeditions. 
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​Alan is a member of Opera America and the National Opera Association and currently sits on the Dramatist Guild's Opera Committee and the Advisory Council of Opera Parallèle. 

​Full Resume

Storytelling is another reinvention. Before becoming a writer, Alan spent twelve years in the wine industry, starting at the City Grill in Atlanta and culminating as the Sommelier of the Dining Room at the Ritz Carton—Buckhead, a Mobil Five-Star, AAA Five-Diamond restaurant. He then transitioned into the field of education, working as a special educator for sixteen years, focusing primarily on reading acquisition for elementary and middle school students.  

"How in the heck do you pronounce that last name?" OH/la/KNEE/check  ​