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Ben Steinfeld

Part-time Faculty
bs97@nyu.edu

B.A., Theatre Arts, Brown University, 2001
M.F.A., Acting, Brown University, 2005

Ben Steinfeld is an actor, director, writer, adjunct professor and artistic associate at NYU Gallatin. He is also co-artistic director of the acclaimed Fiasco Theater. As an actor, Steinfeld has been seen on Broadway in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Cyrano de Bergerac and as James Monroe in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. His Off-Broadway acting and directing work for Fiasco includes: his Lucille Lortel-nominated performance as the Baker in Into the Woods at the Roundabout Theatre (Lortel Award for Best Revival); Cymbeline at Theatre for a New Audience and the Barrow Street Theatre (Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Revival); Measure for Measure at the New Victory Theatre (New York Times’s Top Ten of 2014), The Two Gentlemen of Verona at TFANA and Folger Theatre (Helen Hayes nomination for Best Direction), Twelfth Night at Classic Stage Company, and Merrily We Roll Along at the Roundabout. In the summer of 2016, he made his London acting and directing debut with Fiasco’s Into the Woods at the Menier Chocolate Factory, and he received the LA Drama Critics Circle award for co-directing a national tour of Into the Woods. His television and film acting work includes HBO’s Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, Callahan, The Good Wife, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Steinfeld co-authored an essay for Living With Shakespeare (Random House, 2013) and wrote the book for the original musical Diamond Alice, which was commissioned by and premiered at Gallatin. In the spring of 2017, he was a guest lecturer at Princeton University. He delivered the inaugural Michael Armstrong Memorial Lecture at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He has narrated several young people’s concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. He is a graduate of Brown University and the Brown/Trinity MFA Program.

Awards & Honors

2022

Ben Steinfeld Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching

Ben Steinfeld is an actor, director, writer, part time faculty member  and artistic associate at NYU Gallatin. He is also co-artistic director of the acclaimed Fiasco Theater.  

Teaching and Research Interests

acting; directing; theatre history; music; Shakespeare; 20th-century American drama; musical theatre 

Recent News

Along with Noah Brody, Ben Steinfeld co-directed the in Fiasco Theater’s Production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which ran at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, from November 25 through December 20, 2015. In the production, Steinfeld performed the roles of Lucio and Froth.

Steinfeld co-directed, along with Jessie Austrian, Fiasco Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which ran from April 24 through June 20, 2015 at the Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in Brooklyn, New York. The show was a 2015 New York Times Critics Pick.