BIOGRAPHY
Photo by Andrea Martínez
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Alan Olejniczak is a San Francisco playwright and opera librettist. His opera, Death of Ivan Ilych with music by John Young received a co-premiere in 2021 with Opera Orlando and Thompson Street Opera Company in Chicago. In August 2021, his site-specific opera, Unbound, with music by Nathan Hall premiered at Studio Friction in Denver, CO. It received it's West Coast premiere with TigerBear Productions in Palm Springs in October.
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. Next year, Alan's play Concerto, will premiere with Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, and his opera Dreams Americanos with music by Chris Pratorius Gómez will premiere in Houston with I Colori dell'opera, along with Atlas of Remote Islands, with music by Nathan Hall premiering with Opera on Tap - Colorado. 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 currently a board member of Opera Parallèle and Opera Committee member for the Dramatist Guild. 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 including: Micro Galleries in Thailand, October 2023 and The Arctic Circle Residency for an Alumni Expedition in 2024 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. Alan and his husband, David live in San Francisco and The Sea Ranch, California. "How in the heck do you pronounce that last name?" OH/la/KNEE/check |