John Collins is founder and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service (ERS), a theater ensemble based in New York City. Characterized by its mash-up of high-and low-tech design, literary and found text, and innovative choreography, ERS has created theatrical adaptations of mainstays of American literature in GATZ, a real-time reading of The Great Gatsby; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928), a take on the first chapter of the William Faulkner novel; and The Select (The Sun Also Rises), based on the Ernest Hemingway novel. Among his many honors, Collins has received a 2011 Lucille Lortel Award and a 2010 Elliot Norton Award—both for Outstanding Director—as well as a 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a 2011 United States Artists Fellowship, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2012, Collins and ERS were honored with an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence. In 2016, he served as a Pew Fellowships panelist.
