Robert Quinlan is a professional stage director, arts administrator, actor, and head of the MFA Directing Program at Illinois State University.
Recent directing projects include Twelfth Night, King Lear, As You Like It (a musical adaptation with Jordan Coughtry), Richard II, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Illinois Shakespeare Festival (Associate Artistic Director); Into the Woods at the New Jewish Theatre in St. Louis; Henry IV, Part One, Hamlet and Richard III at Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre (member of the Artistic Collective); The Amish Project at Taproot Theatre in Seattle; the world premiere of The Magic Bicycle at First Stage Milwaukee; Of Debt and the Maidens, #thisrocks, and #wink with Chicago’s Fifth House Music Ensemble; and The Maids (in Mandarin) at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. As a Guest Director and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he directed Killer Joe, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Illusion, and 44 Plays for 44 Presidents.
He was the Associate Producer for the Documentary Feature Film The Actual, Authentic Version of Who You Say I Am (Official Selection, Louisville International Festival of Film), based on his own play, And I Remember. He holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Illinois, and and MFA in Directing from Illinois State University.
