Barclay Goldsmith

Barclay Goldsmith

Founder

Barclay Goldsmith is the founder of Borderlands Theater (1986) which in turn developed out of a community-based theater collective: Teatro Libertad, a collective active in the 1970’s civil rights movement. Before, Goldsmith lived and worked in Mexico and Argentina, where he directed U.S.-Host Country Bi-National Cultural Centers. He has spent the better part of his theater life, in addition to teaching, developing and producing theater that speaks to the diverse voices of the region. Through the Border Playwrights Program (1988), he has sought to have emerging (and established) playwrights produced here and in theaters around the country. In support of this mission, Goldsmith was a co-founder of the National New Play Network (1998), an organization which now encompasses over 90 member theaters, that champions the new plays and new playwrights. Expanding Borderlands’ mission to be truly a theater of PLACE here on the border, he established the U.S. Mexico Program, which works extensively with Mexican artists and theater companies in trans-national projects.

He has directed many of Borderlands Theater’s productions. Ongoing programs he has established include the Border Playwrights Project, featuring new plays by established and emerging playwrights, and The U.S./Mexico Project supporting exchanges of theater practitioners across the border. He is a founding member of the National New Play Network and has worked as director at Circulo Teatral in Mexico City, in new play development and translations at LARK Play Development Center in New York, and at the Kennedy Center’s National MFA program in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Stanford University, BA, and Carnegie Mellon University, MFA.