Michael Counts, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetMichael Counts
Date of Birth: 25-May-1970
Place of Birth: New York City, New York, United States
Profession: opera director
Zodiac Sign: Gemini 
About Michael Counts
- Michael Counts (born May 25, 1970) is an American stage director and designer of epic theater, opera and immersive performance events and creator and producer of large-scale public art installations and digital platforms.
- He has been described in The New York Times as a “mad genius” and “a master of immersive theatre”, and in Variety as having the "grandest ambitions" of leading pioneers of immersive theater in New York City.Counts has worked in an exceptionally wide range of contexts and locations which include a performance on the side of a mountain in Japan, a custom-designed bus that made Times Square and the surrounding streets its stage, an immersive environment for a program of spatial music for symphony orchestra presented in a vast drill hall, a six-story video tower in a planned community in Florida, and two immersive adaptations of Dante’s The Divine Comedy: the first an evening performance in a series of walk-through installations in a 40,000 square foot Brooklyn warehouse and the second in an escape room maze in Midtown Manhattan.
- He has also directed and designed major opera productions at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City Center, the Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College, and on tour at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
- Many of his innovations were ahead of their time, anticipating new developments in the worlds of live performance, design and the digital realm that began to achieve mainstream success a few years after he had pioneered their use.Counts is the Founding Director of Counts Projects and currently produces his work in New York City.
- He has served as a consultant for Disney theme parks and other leading global entertainment and media companies.
- He was a co-founder of GAle GAtes et al., a performance and visual art company initially resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) at various locations in Manhattan and on tour in Asia before taking up residence in the Brooklyn warehouse.
- From 1996 to 2003, Counts created a series of immersive performance installations at the warehouse space and elsewhere that many regard as some the most influential productions of New York’s downtown performance scene in recent decades.
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