BRIAN KITE (Director) has directed live theater across the United States and abroad and is currently the Chair of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Department of Theater. He recently directed the World Premier of the musical Rebel Genius at UCLA. He served as producing artistic director of La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts from 2008-2015 and directed many productions for the theater, co-produced by McCoy Rigby Entertainment, including their critically acclaimed productions of American Idiot, Billy Elliot, Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, Little Shop of Horrors, Dinner with Friends, Steel Magnolias starring Cathy Rigby, Driving Miss Daisy starring Michael Learned, and David Auburn’s Proof. Kite is the recipient of the Los Angeles Ovation Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his production of Spring Awakening and was again nominated for his productions of Les Misérables and American Idiot. He directed the national tours of Steel Magnolias, Judgment at Nuremberg, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, and Pride and Prejudice for L.A. Theatre Works, and staged the first production of Miss Saigon to ever play in China when his show closed the Macau International Music Festival. He also directed Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, starring Margaret Colin, which toured throughout Mainland China. The production was the first U.S. production of a play at Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA). In 2018, he staged the South China premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole in Mandarin at the Guangzhou Dramatic Arts Center in Guangzhou, China. Additionally, he helmed a production of Cabaret in Bermuda under the patronage of the Queen’s Governor and his work with actress/writer Michelle Azar, From Baghdad to Brooklyn, premiered at the United Solo Festival in New York City in 2017 and continues to tour nationally. Other credits for LATW include directing the live radio recordings of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, David Rambo’s The Tug of War, and Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced. Kite holds an appointment as a Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and is the artistic director of the award-winning Buffalo Nights Theatre Company.