Nick Hrutkay is an award-winning director based in Pittsburgh. He has spent ten seasons on the artistic staff at Stagedoor Manor where he is the Director of Education and Assistant Artistic Director.

 

Nick has directed over 80 productions at theatres across the country including Theatre Row, The Kennedy Center, The Brick, Actors Temple Theatre, Hippodrome Theatre, Central Square Theater, The Media Theatre, Cumberland Theatre, The Huron Playhouse, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, Alchemical Studios, Playwrights Local, Keystone Repertory Theater, Stagedoor Manor, Carnegie Mellon University, Point Park University, and more. Recently he co-directed A Night with Janis Joplin at Bell Theater/Axelrod Performing Arts Center with Mary Bridget Davies, who also reprised her Tony Award nominated performance from the Broadway production. In the summer of 2025, he directed the Music Theatre International (MTI) pilot production of Dear Evan Hansen at Stagedoor Manor, working with Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul on developing the show for schools.

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​With a special interest in the work of Stephen Sondheim, Nick has directed many Sondheim musicals including Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Assassins, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, The Frogs, Sondheim On Sondheim, and the world premiere concert of The Sondheim Letters. He has directed and adapted a series of readings of King Lear and Macbeth in a collaboration between Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks and Carnegie Mellon University Libraries where CMU's copy of Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio was displayed at the performances. 

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Nick is the former Artistic Director of The Huron Playhouse, one the longest-running summer stock theatres in the United States. He has overseen several new work development initiatives including the Point Park University Musical Theatre Junior Lab and currently coordinates Dramafest at Stagedoor Manor leading the annual new work festival whose selected plays are published through Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Inc.

 

He has taught at Point Park University, Stagedoor Manor, Stagedoor Manor Studios, Stagedoor Manor College Connection, Hippodrome Theatre, Quantum Theatre, Raue Center School for the Arts, The Huron Playhouse, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, and Pittsburgh Musical Theater, where he was the Chair of the Acting Department for the PMT Conservatory. He has also been heavily involved with The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival having three productions, The Embalmer, Black Friday: The Musical, and Discovering Eden, invited to perform in the Region II Fringe Festival.

 

Nick is the recipient of an ArtWorks Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region II / Stage Directors and Choreographers Society Fellowship, a BroadwayWorld Award for Best Director of a Musical, and has been honored with over a dozen other award nominations.