CHRISTOPHER McELROEN is a Brooklyn-based writer, director, and artist whose work examines America—its ideals, its lived realities, and the forces that unite and divide its people. He is the Founding Artistic Director of the american vicarious and previously co-founded The Classical Theatre of Harlem.

His recent work includes Fight for America!, an immersive performance installation examining political violence, January 6, and the gamification of American politics. Developed with artist Neal Wilkinson and game designer Alessio Cavatore (Warhammer 40,000, Bolt Action), the work transforms the events surrounding January 6 into a large-scale participatory tabletop wargame in which audiences confront competing strategies, narratives, and ideas about democracy. Following its New York development in January 2025, Fight for America! premiered in London in June 2025 and has been featured by NPR, CNN, The Washington Post, The Observer, and Slate.

McElroen also adapted and directs Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, a restaging of the historic 1965 Cambridge Union debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. Since its 2020 New York premiere, the production has toured internationally, with engagements in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, London, Bristol, and at the Cambridge Union itself. Its 2026 London engagement was presented at Wilton’s Music Hall.

His recent and current theatre work also includes Our American Queen, which received its London premiere in January 2026; Henrik, After Ibsen, a contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder set inside the world of artificial intelligence; and The Free Square, a new participatory work exploring democracy through the history and culture of bingo.

In collaboration with four-time Grammy Award nominee Gerald Clayton, McElroen developed Sacredness, a contemporary performance work inspired by Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, which premiered at The Soraya Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles in January 2026. Their previous collaboration, Piedmont Blues: A Search for Salvation, emerged from a two-year journey through the Piedmont regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Combining music, film, dance, and oral history, the work premiered at Duke Performances and subsequently toured nationally.

McElroen produced Far From the Nile, winner of Best Non-Fiction Feature at the 2022 Cairo International Film Festival. The documentary follows twelve musicians from seven Nile River countries who form an international musical collaboration amid the region’s escalating conflicts over water before embarking on a 100-day tour across the United States.

His performance installations include Negative Liberty / Positive Liberty, created in response to the events of January 6 and inspired by Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 lecture Two Concepts of Liberty. Designed for a single audience member, the work invites the participant to lend their voice to an artistic distillation of Berlin’s argument about the competing meanings of freedom and the dangers of using liberty as a justification for coercion.

McElroen also created Static Apnea, an intimate performance installation examining breath, isolation, and collective anxiety in 2020. A single audience member entered a tunnel of blue light before encountering a performer behind glass in a work lasting nine minutes and two seconds. Static Apnea was included in New York Magazine’s “Highbrow and Brilliant” Approval Matrix.

He developed and directed Jaymes Jorsling’s (A)loft Modulation, a jazz-inflected play inspired by Sam Stephenson’s The Jazz Loft Project. The production received four AUDELCO Award nominations.

McElroen received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction for the world-premiere stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The production premiered at Court Theatre in Chicago in January 2012, where it received seven Jeff Awards, before subsequent runs at Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. Alongside the production, McElroen developed national partnerships and led public conversations exploring race, identity, and the American experience.

With visual artist Paul Chan and Creative Time, he co-produced and directed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a year-long post-Katrina community development and performance initiative. The project staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly neighborhoods of New Orleans while connecting the production to sustained community organizing and redevelopment efforts. The New York Times named the project one of the ten most significant art events in the United States in 2007, and its archive is now held by The Museum of Modern Art.

He also directed the world premiere of 51st (dream) State, the final work of poet, musician, and activist Sekou Sundiata. The multimedia exploration of American identity, citizenship, and empire premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival before touring internationally.

As a co-founder of The Classical Theatre of Harlem, McElroen produced 41 productions between 1999 and 2009. During that period, the company received 18 AUDELCO Awards, six OBIE Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and a Drama Desk Award, and was recognized by the Drama League as one of “Eight Theatres in America to Watch.”

His directing work at The Classical Theatre of Harlem included The Cherry Orchard with Wendell Pierce and Earle Hyman; Three Sisters with Reg E. Cathey, Earle Hyman, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Carmen de Lavallade; an original adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son; Marat/Sade with T. Ryder Smith; and Jean Genet’s The Blacks: A Clown Show, which received four OBIE Awards and was named one of The New York Times’ ten best Off-Broadway productions of 2003.

McElroen’s work has been presented internationally at venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Public Theater, MoMA, MASS MoCA, Walker Art Center, and Bristol Old Vic, and he has lectured at institutions including Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, and NYU.

His honors include the American Theatre Wing Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Drama Desk Award, Edwin Booth Award, Lucille Lortel Award, two OBIE Awards, and the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction.