THEATRE DIRECTOR
Rich is an award-winning international theatre maker, writer, deviser and movement director.
Since 2000, his ambitious, visually arresting ensemble productions have been performed in more than 25 countries, from Canada to New Zealand.
Rich has created over 250 works for small and mid-scale touring. He has a long-standing partnership with Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, where he writes and directs mid-scale productions, teaches and supports international collaboration through UK COLLAB. His productions with SDAC include The Dreamer, Shan Hai Jing and Metamorphosis, which he adapted and directed in 2025 and will tour China in 2027 before expanding internationally. As an experimental devising director, he has collaborated on more than 35 five-star Edinburgh Fringe productions.
For 12 years, Rich was Associate Director at Gecko, co-creating productions including The Overcoat, Missing, Institute, The Wedding and The Time of Your Life. In 2025, Rich also collaborated with Mind the Gap to create The Invite for Bradford UK City of Culture.
Over the past decade, Rich's practice has increasingly focused on working with international ensembles, bringing local traditions and contemporary cultural themes together through physical and visual storytelling. He also specialises in introducing devising to companies and performers encountering the process for the first time.
Following the award-winning success of Metamorphosis, Rich’s next major international production, Chasing Time, celebrates the poetry, resilience and unseen inner lives of the people who keep modern cities moving. Inspired by Chinese delivery rider and poet Wang Jibing, the work arrives at a moment of major recognition for Wang, whose collection Flying Low has just received the Ninth Lu Xun Literature Prize for Poetry.
2026 / 27 projects in development include;
THE HUMAN PROJECT a new immersive experience inspired by the award winning novel The Vegetarian built around a single question; Can a human being exist without participating in violence?
SNOWFALL an adaptation of Edo period Japanese folktales set in a village overrun by ghosts.WILDMAN a top secret theatre show inspired by Bigfoot, created by artist Alan Clay.
CHASING TIME a large scale devised project adapted from the work of food delivery-driver / poet Wang Jibing.
KIDS TV a devised theatre show for young audiences set in a film studio. The multi-talented cast simultaneously perform their show to an audience in the room and to audiences watching at home via YouTube. Celebrating the creativity at the heart of all good content.
2027/28 | THE VEGETARIAN
| IN DEVELOPMENT
Inspired by the writing of Han Kang. Coming 2027/28.
2027 | CHASING TIME |
IN DEVELOPMENT
Chasing Time began in May 2026 and will go into rehearsal in December before beginning its tour in May 2027.
A cast of 10 performers telling true stories inspired by the poetry of celebrated food delivery driver / poet, Wang Jibing.
2026 / 27 | IN DEVELOPMENT SNOWFALL
Long ago a legendary spirit hunter gathered the ghosts of forgotten stories and bound them to an island without electricity.
Here, on Snowfall, beyond the reach of electric light, the darkness keeps the stories alive.
For generations, a solitary Guardian has watched over the island, ensuring its restless inhabitants never escape. But now he has disappeared. Searching for her missing grandfather, a young woman travels to the forbidden island she has been warned about all her life.
There she discovers an entire town of ghosts - and each one sees in her the same impossible opportunity: a way back into the living world, where darkness has not disappeared at all. It has simply changed its shape.
2026 / 27 | METAMORPHOSIS
WORLD TOUR
Awards & Recognition for Metamorphosis,
Rich Rusk’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, created with Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, has received major recognition in China for its innovative approach to physical and visual theatre.
At the 2025 Chinese Theatre Awards, Metamorphosis won Best Innovative Production and Best Stage Design, having been nominated across three categories.
International press coverage highlighted the production’s highly collaborative creative team and described the work as representative of an increasingly international outlook within Chinese-language theatre.
In 2026, Metamorphosis received further recognition at the prestigious One Drama Awards, winning Annual Innovative Production. The jury praised its distinctive contemporary interpretation of Kafka, its physical performance and symbolic staging, and its transformation of large-scale theatrical language into an intimate theatrical experience.
2025 Chinese Theatre Awards
Best Innovative Production - Winner
Best Stage Design - Winner
Best Small Theatre Production - Nominated
2026 One Drama Awards
Annual Innovative Production - Winner
2026
ORDINARY EXTRAORDINARY
Exploring the relationship between film and performer. Ordinary Extraordinary is a project with experimentation at it's core, we are trying to push our practice in the rehearsal room to find things that we have never seen done before. Story is everything, and we hope that by combining movement, film and live music we can create an unusual multidimensional storytelling experience. I expect the show to go into rehearsal in the summer of 2027, touring 2027/28.
