Alan Olejniczak

I am open to collaborating with composers and producers for new operas, oratorios, and adaptations.

I'm a San Francisco-based writer and the Librettist in Residence for Cape Town Opera, where I instruct libretto writing for STAGING STORIES, an incubator for new South African opera. My operas include Minute to Midnight (music by Dante De Silva), Petrov (Sergey Nesterov), On Our Way (Nathan Wasner), Atlas of Remote Islands and Unbound (Nathan Hall), and Death of Ivan Ilych (John Young). I also created new English-language adaptations of Hector Berlioz's Beatrice + Benedict for Opera Orlando and The Cunning Little Vixen for Cape Town Opera, premiering this July. I'm currently developing a re-imagined Così fan tutte for Pocket Opera. Other works include the nativity oratorio, Yosef and the Counseling Angel (Cole Thomason-Redus), and my music-drama Concerto with The Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma in partnership with The Oklahoma City Philharmonic. I currently serve on the Dramatist Guild's Opera Committee and the Advisory Council of Opera Parallèle. You can find my profile on Operabase.

I am also a Resident Writer for The Proscenium. This London-based online theatre company features my plays Next of Kin and Helt Texas, as well as an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, with David Ricardo-Pearce. Looking ahead, I am excited for this summer's release of my upcoming audio drama, Transgress.​ 

This year, I release Summer’s End: An Arctic Intermedia Installation, a gallery and performance piece that combines three-channel video, live piano, and poetry. It's a piece created during a residency in the Arctic with collaborators Rachel Honnery and Kat Roma Greer, with music by composer Nathan Hall. 

Artist residencies are an important part of my writing practice. I served as the Artist in Residence for Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park and was the first playwright ever selected by the National Parks Arts Foundation. My other residencies include Micro Galleries in Pātan, Nepal; Nes Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland; Nocefresca in Milis, Sardinia; Château d'Orquevaux in France; and the prestigious Arctic Circle Residency, where I sailed the icy waters around Svalbard for two expeditions. ​
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Full Resume

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

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