Patrick Mark Saunders
Upcoming Projects
Directing Polaroid Stories by Naomi Iizuka, University of Rhode Island
Robert E. Will Theatre, October 13-16 and 20-23, 2022
In Naomi Iizuka’s Polaroid Stories, everyone is desperate for an escape: an escape from their pasts, their problems, their partners, and their pain. Set in an urban underworld, these “dreamers, dealers, and desperadoes” are brought together through their shared struggles with addiction and abuse. Though these characters appear to be our contemporaries, Iizuka boldly elevates these often-overlooked individuals to the ranks of Greco-Roman gods and heroes. Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, mythology and modernity clash together to reveal tales that are at once urgent and universal. As poetic as it is violent and vulgar, do you dare to enter this labyrinth where a rave may cause you to go raving mad?
...About Me
"Patrick Saunders- unbelievably hardworking, hyper-inelligent...
I'd want him in every rehearsal room."
-Brendan O'Hea, Shakespeare's Globe
It all began when I was seven, with a wooden crutch and a script. Six productions of A Christmas Carol later, and I was completely and hopelessly in love with the theatre. Some of my earliest (and happiest) memories include tip-toeing through the dark to get to 'places' and watching nightly transformations as ordinary people turned themselves into extraordinary characters.
I graduated from Providence College with a BA in English and Theatre Arts and, after a few years of acting and directing locally, journeyed from New England to Olde England to pursue my MFA. A residency at Shakespeare's Globe deepened an already ardent awe and wonder for the Bard's work, while my international peers and instructors brought me into contact with a number of diverse and exciting theatrical practices and traditions.
My interests range from classical texts to musical comedy to modern drama to bedroom farces and beyond... And I am as passionate about directing and teaching emerging artists as I am about my own desire to perform.
