Eric Fraisher Hayes is an Artistic Director, Stage and Film Director, Producer, Educator and Equity Actor, with 30 years of professional experience in the theatre. He is the foremost interpreter of the plays of Eugene O’Neill in the world.
As Artistic Director for the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House, Eric Fraisher Hayes provides the artistic vision at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site. He directs and produces reimagined classic plays, develops new works and script-in-hand performances paired with dynamic discussions. During the pandemic, he branched into the digital arts, directing a feature film of Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon as well as a short film series entitled “Ghosts of Tao House.” From 2010-2019, he also served as Artistic Director for Role Players Ensemble of the Bay Area. Eric transformed these companies from local community organizations to professional companies attracting audiences from around the country. He built networks of talented actors, designers and directors that continue to work together to create challenging and engaging performances.
Eric’s ability to establish programming partnerships with organizations in the community has been critical to the growth and success of the Eugene O’Neill Festival. Each September, EONF, National Park Service and numerous community partners come together to produce the O’Neill Festival, which explores and honors the work of O’Neill and other great dramatists. Under his leadership, the Eugene O’Neill Festival has grown from a single weekend event to a month-long festival and the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House has become the leading producer of the plays of O’Neill in the world.
Eric has directed over 100 productions, with a specialty in adapting and re-imagining the plays of Eugene O’Neill. He has directed 33 of O’Neill’s 51 plays, making him the foremost interpreter of the plays of Eugene O’Neill in the world. Four of his productions have traveled to Ireland for the Eugene O’Neill International Festival of Theatre. He has also taken shows to Boston and St. Louis. Eric’s overall directing resume consists of a wide range of playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Charles Morey, Carey Perloff, Gilbert and Sullivan and David Lindsay-Abaire.
As a scholar/practitioner of the works of Eugene O’Neill, Eric has made presentations at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A Noise Within Theatre Company, the American Literature Association Annual Conference in San Francisco, the Comparative Drama Conference in Orlando, and the International Eugene O’Neill Conference in Galway, Ireland. He has published numerous articles on directing O’Neill for the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Review. His theatrical lecture “Eugene O’Neill: 51 Plays in 51 Minutes” debuted in fall of 2021 and went on to be a featured event at the International Eugene O’Neill Conference in Boston in July 2022.
2023 was a busy year. Eric’s January production of O’Neill’s The First Man was invited to be performed at Washington University in St. Louis in October and his production of O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” was performed in both California and Ireland. Additionally, his filmed stage adaption of O’Neill’s Welded was released in the spring, and he directed and edited four short films for the Ghosts of Tao House series.