Denis Butkus is a performer, writer, and teacher. He is an Associate Artist with Theater Mitu and co-creator of the company’s productions Juárez: A Documentary Mythology, Hamlet/UR – Hamlet, A Dream Play, and the upcoming Remnant. Most recently he appeared as Happy in the company’s production of Death of a Salesman at The Brooklyn Academy of Music and on tour in Santiago, Chile in association with DUOC UC and Cairo, Egypt as part of the Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre.

As a performer his work has been seen onstage internationally in Abu Dhabi, UAE; Beirut, Lebanon; Juárez, Mexico; Torun, Poland; and Vienna, Austria. Throughout the United States at MASS MoCA, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Los Angeles Theater Center, Ignite Arts/Cara Mia Theatre, Z Space, North American Cultural Laboratory, The Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara, The Long Wharf Theatre, The Intiman Theater, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and The Sacramento Theatre Company. In New York City at Lincoln Center Theater, Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Rising Phoenix Repertory, New York Theater Workshop, The Drama League, The Mint Theater Company, Irish Repertory Theater, The Summer Play Festival, P.S. 122, HERE Arts Center, The Flea Theater, Ars Nova, The Public Theater, Cherry Lane Theatre, Red Bull, and Keen Company.

His writing and research addresses Global Performance and Interdisciplinary Contemporary Art with a focus on how artists use Archives as creation tools, taking him to Africa (Egypt, Djibouti), The Middle East (The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey), South and East Asia (India, Nepal, Thailand, and Japan), and throughout the United States. He is a Field Instructor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has led workshops and master classes at New York University Abu Dhabi, Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts, MCC Theater’s Youth Company, and with Theater Mitu as part of the company’s Artist Intensives in New York City, Japan, and India. Denis received his BFA from The Juilliard School of Drama and his MA in Contemporary Performance Practice from NYU’s Gallatin School where he was awarded the Newington-Cropsey Fellowship for his international research on Shakespeare.