Bruce Adams is a theatre director and dramaturg, with over fifteen years of experience as an educator and facilitator in higher education and community settings. With a focus on inclusive, empathetic processes and striking, unapologetically contemporary theatre-making, his creative practice also encompasses producing and sound design. He is the co-founder and creative director of BRICK, a multi-disciplinary community arts and training company.

As the founding artistic director of the critically-acclaimed ensemble Thrust, Bruce has led and made work across the UK with a particular emphasis on new writing, reimagined texts from the modern canon and intermedial adaptations of non-theatre works. His 2013 production of Pornography by Simon Stephens was described by theatre academic Pedro de Senna as “one of the most powerful productions I have seen anywhere in British theatre”.

Bruce trained as a director at Middlesex University and is currently completing his masters in dramaturgy at Birkbeck, University of London. He lectured in theatre directing and dramaturgy and was the programme leader for Middlesex’s undergraduate Theatre courses, before leaving in 2024 to return to freelance work. Prior to teaching in HE, Bruce worked as a creative facilitator in a wide range of community settings including youth theatres and children’s charities. Bruce is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Other major projects include creating and curating More Storm Festival, London’s only festival devoted to scratch and work-in-progress, and launching Theatre Arts Exchange at Edinburgh Fringe, a temporary theatre space whose programme was focused on facilitating early-career artists to achieve ambitious work within a fringe setting. Bruce has a long history with the Edinburgh Fringe, most recently as part of the research team for Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe, which he joined in 2022 and is the longest-running show on the festival.

Bruce also practices as a sound designer, largely in combination with his own directing but occasionally for other collaborators.

He lives in London with his husband and houseplants.