Andrei Serban

In 1992 he became Professor of Theater at the Columbia University School of the Arts, a position he resigned from in 2019, citing oppressive pressure in the name of "political correctness" on a level which reminded him of communist Romania.

He made his debut with two pieces, on November 16, 1968 with The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht and at the following evening with the comedy She stoops to conquer by Oliver Goldsmith at The Theater of Youth in Piatra Neamț.

More recently, Șerban has directed Sarah Kane's Cleansed in Romania; Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opéra Bastille in Paris; and a popular production of Hamlet, starring Liev Schreiber in the title role, at the Public Theater in New York.

At the A.R.T., he has directed Lysistrata, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The King Stag, Sganarelle, Three Sisters, The Juniper Tree, The Miser, Twelfth Night, Sweet Table at the Richelieu, and Pericles.

In late 2019, Andrei Șerban resigned from his position at Columbia University, citing pressure on staff to accept teachers and students lacking the required academic standards in the name of political correctness.

In an interview with a Romanian TV station, he compared the intransigent leftist atmosphere dominating the American academia to the oppressive one in communist Romania, where artists were told by party functionaries how to think and how to create.

The same year, he received from the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers the prestigious George Abbott Award, honoring artists who have made a major impact on theatre in the twentieth-century.