BIOGRAPHY

Photo by Andrea Martínez

Alan Olejniczak is a San Francisco playwright and opera librettist. This year, his opera, Atlas of Remote Islands, with music by Nathan Hall premieres with Opera on Tap - Colorado. Alan's play Concerto premieres with the Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma. He also has two opera workshops with his opera Hypatia with music by Afarin Monsouri and Minute to Midnight with Dante De Silva.

​Alan's first opera, Death of Ivan Ilych with music by John Young co-premiered in 2021 with Opera Orlando and Thompson Street Opera Company in Chicago. That same year, his site-specific opera, Unbound, with music by Nathan Hall premiered at Studio Friction in Denver, CO, and received its West Coast premiere with TigerBear Productions in Palm Springs in October 2022. Alan currently has six other operas in development and set the text for the song cycle, A Light Rekindled, with Iranian-American composer, Amin Sarrafi, and a Christmas oratorio, Yosef and the Counseling Angel, with Cole Thomason-Redus. 

Alan is also the Playwright in Residence with The Proscenium, a London-based online theatre company. Their first season includes his plays: Next of Kin, Helt Texas, and his adaptation of A Christmas Carol with David Ricardo-Pearce. Their second season will premiere his play, WorkForce. 

​Alan was the Artist in Residence for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and the first playwright ever selected by the National Parks Arts Foundation. Alan’s other artist residencies include: Micro Galleries in Pātan, Nepal; Nes Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland; Nocefresca in Milis, Sardinia; along with the prestigious The Arctic Circle Residency, sailing the icy waters around Svalbard. Future residencies include Micro Galleries in Thailand in October 2023 and The Arctic Circle Residency for an Alumni Expedition in 2024. Alan is currently an Opera Committee member of the Dramatist Guild and an Advisory Board Member of Opera Parallèle. ​
 
Full Resume

​Becoming a storyteller is another reinvention for Alan. In past lives, he was a wine professional for twelve years, started his career at the City Grill in Atlanta and ending as the Sommelier of the Dining Room of the Ritz Carton - Buckhead, a Mobil Five-Star, AAA Five Diamond restaurant. Alan then went on to become a Special Educator working for sixteen years with elementary and middle-school students with a focus on reading acquisition.  

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