ROBERT CUCUZZA is a Los Angeles-based theater artist, filmmaker, actor, and acting teacher. He recently directed his new play, CATTYWAMPUS, a Pittsburghese take on Strindberg's Miss Julie, at REDCAT in their NOW Festival. CATTYWAMPUS is slated for New York run at the Obie Award-winning Incubator Arts Project in January. In LA, he staged the world premiere of Iannis Xenakis' radio play POUR LA PAIX (REDCAT) and Jillian Lauren's performance piece MOTHER TONGUE (Steve Allen Theater). At CalArts, where he received his MFA in Directing, he wrote and directed the musical extravaganza HELLZPOPPIN' and directed a radical staging of Shakespeare's MEASURE FOR MEASURE. His recent stage work with the internal Ernst & Young band “American P.I.” helped them to win the 2011 Battle of the Corporate Bands at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Deemed a "master of mayhem" by The New York Times, his writing and directing work is known for its spectacular vision, controlled chaos, imaginative physicality, dark humor, heightened theatricality and high stakes tension. As a playwright, director and producer in New York, he spent six years as an artist-in-residence at Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theater where he mounted many highly-acclaimed original plays and was a co-founder of the Obie Award-winning Blueprint Series, a festival for emerging theater artists.

As a stage actor he has performed at the legendary Ontological-Hysteric Theater and across Europe in Richard Foreman’s PANIC! (HOW TO BE HAPPY!), PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE, and MY HEAD WAS A SLEDGEHAMMER. Since 1997 he has been a company member of Elevator Repair Service, with whom he performed in TOTAL FICTIONAL LIE, ROOM TONE, and originated the role of Tom Buchanan in GATZ — a complete staging of the entire text of "The Great Gatsby." After its sold-out Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, GATZ was placed on multiple "Best of 2010 Theater" lists including The New York Times, who called it "[t]he most remarkable achievement in theater not only of this year but also of this decade..." With ERS, he has played in nearly thirty major festivals and theaters in the U.S., all over Europe and across the globe. Also in New York, he has performed Off-Broadway with Axis Company and in dance-theater works by Bessie award-winners David Neumann and Big Dance Theater.

As a filmmaker, he has written, directed, produced and edited the films THE INVINCIBLE ECKSTEINS, THE BLUE HORIZON, SPEED FREAKS and several shorts. His film THE ARMED BOY— a silent film created to accompany Karl Jenkin’s modern choral mass "The Armed Man"—was commissioned by the Rackham Symphony Choir in Detroit. As a film actor, he has played lead roles in SPEED FREAKS, MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS (opposite Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays) and THE STRANGE CASE OF MARIE FRANCE, as well as featured roles in other films.

As an acting teacher he has taught popular classes at private institutions, colleges and high schools in his home state of Pennsylvania, in New York City and in Los Angeles at CalArts. In 2006 he founded ACME Acting Lab, a student-driven acting studio devoted to the creation of professionally produced original plays and films. With his ACME students, he created, produced and directed two plays and two featurette films.

Originally from Bradford, PA, Cucuzza is a 1990 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University where he received a BFA in Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor in Theatre. He holds a 2011 MFA in Directing from CalArts. He was the recipient of a 1990 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a one-year independent study of experimental theater in Europe and a 2010-11 recipient of a Beutner Family Award for Excellence in the Arts at CalArts.