Nick Hrutkay is an award-winning director and the Director of Education/Assistant Artistic Director of Stagedoor Manor. 

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His work has been seen Off-Broadway and across the country at Theatre Row, The Kennedy Center, The Brick, Actors Temple Theatre, Theater for the New City, Hippodrome Theatre, Axelrod Performing Arts Center, Bell Theater, Central Square Theater, The Media Theatre, Cumberland Theatre, The Huron Playhouse, Playwrights Local, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, Stagedoor Manor, Carnegie Mellon University, and Point Park University. Select notable credits include co-directing A Night with Janis Joplin with Mary Bridget Davies, who also reprised her Tony Award nominated performance from the Broadway production (Bell Theater/Axelrod Performing Arts Center); Little Shop of Horrors reimagined in a dilapidated drive-in theater starring Chaz May (Huron Playhouse); and the Music Theatre International (MTI) pilot production of Dear Evan Hansen working with Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul on developing the show for schools (Stagedoor Manor). 

 

With a special interest in the works of Stephen Sondheim, Nick has directed many Sondheim musicals including Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Assassins, Company, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, Anyone Can Whistle, The Frogs, Saturday Night, Sondheim On Sondheim, and the world premiere of The Sondheim Letters. In the summer of 2026, his production of Company opened the Stephen Sondheim Theater at Stagedoor Manor joining Broadway and the West End as the only three theaters in the world to be named in his honor thanks to the Stephen Sondheim Trust. 

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He adapted and directed a series of readings of King Lear and Macbeth for Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks where CMU's copy of Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio was displayed at the performances. He has overseen several new work development initiatives including the Point Park University Musical Theatre Junior Lab where he directed the world premiere of the social media cult musical Salem and currently leads Dramafest, the annual new work festival at Stagedoor Manor, whose selected plays are published through Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Inc. Nick is the former Artistic Director of The Huron Playhouse, one the longest-running summer stock theaters in the United States.

 

He has taught at Point Park University, Stagedoor Manor, Boston Center for the Arts, Hippodrome Theatre, Quantum Theatre, Raue Center School for the Arts, and Pittsburgh Musical Theater, where he served as the Chair of the Acting Department for the PMT Conservatory. ​

 

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, and a BroadwayWorld Award for Best Director of a Musical.