Nick Hrutkay is an award-winning director based in Pittsburgh. He has spent 11 seasons on the artistic staff at Stagedoor Manor where he is the Director of Education and Assistant Artistic Director.

 

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, Alchemical Studios, Axelrod Performing Arts Center, Bell Theater, Hippodrome Theatre, Central Square Theater, The Media Theatre, Raue Center for the Arts, Cumberland Theatre, The Huron Playhouse, Playwrights Local, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, Keystone Repertory Theater, Stagedoor Manor, Carnegie Mellon University, and Point Park University. Select notable work includes 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 movie 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). 

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​With a special interest in the works of Stephen Sondheim, Nick has directed many Sondheim musicals including Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, Anyone Can Whistle, The Frogs, Saturday Night, and Sondheim On Sondheim. 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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Nick is the former Artistic Director of The Huron Playhouse, one the longest-running summer stock theaters in the United States. He has overseen several new work development initiatives currently leading Dramafest, the annual new work festival at Stagedoor Manor, whose selected plays are published through Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Inc. He has adapted and directed 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. 

 

He has taught at Point Park University, Stagedoor Manor, Hippodrome Theatre, Raue Center School for the Arts, Quantum Theatre, Stagedoor Manor Studios, Stagedoor Manor College Connection, 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.