Brendan McMahon
Brendan joined the faculty of the School of Drama in 2026. His teaching practice focuses on actor movement, mask technique, clown, Commedia dell’arte, ensemble and physical theatre devising, and improvisation. He is devoted to nurturing actors’ specificity, kinesthetic imagination, and playfulness. With these elements in play, he aims to empower their unique voices and visions as storytellers.
Brendan is an actor, director, movement director, and deviser devoted to embodied, physically creative, and playful approaches to theatre creation and interpretation.
As a teacher, Brendan specializes in the Lecoq approach to physical theatre creation and performance, mask, clown, and Commedia dell’arte. He previously taught at Southern Oregon University in Ashland Oregon, where he was a tenured Associate Professor of Theatre Performance, specializing in Movement and Devising. He also taught at SUNY Purchase College of Acting, Long Island University Post, and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in NYC.
Brendan has worked as an actor and puppeteer at theaters such as the Lincoln Center, The Shakespeare Theatre in DC, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Asolo Rep, and with companies such as Mabou Mines, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Classical Theatre, Quantum Theatre, Basil Twist’s Dream Music Puppetry, and many others.
His directing and devising credits include The Visit, Servant of Two Masters, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and A Vampire Story at the Oregon Center for the Arts, Today is the Day! (Love and Violence) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show, The Killer at Post Theatre Company, Médée at Theatre Lumen in Brussels, BE, and Peregrinations with the devised theatre collective Long Story Short at The Tank Theatre in NYC. He is a company member of New York Classical Theatre in NYC where he was most recently the Movement Coach for Henry IV Parts I and II.
He is a graduate of École Lassaad, an international Lecoq pedagogy program in Brussels, Belgium, and the University of Michigan School of Theatre and Drama. Brendan also studied Clown with Phillipe Gaulier, Commedia dell’arte with Antonio Fava, Viewpoints with the SITI Company, and Improvisation with Upright Citizen’s Brigade, among other teachers and pedagogies. He is a member of the Actor’s Equity Association, Society of American Fight Directors, and Association of Theatre Movement Educators.