Charles Chemin is a French-American director and dramaturg, born in 1983.

 

Since 2025, he has been the artistic director of The Watermill Center in New York, a multidisciplinary arts centre founded in 1992 by Robert Wilson, where he presents the work of numerous renowned and emerging international artists.

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He collaborated with Robert Wilson for 33 years, first as an actor and then, from 2009, as co-director and dramaturg on more than twenty productions around the world, including Mary Said with Isabelle Huppert, PESSOA with Maria de Medeiros, and Beckett’s solo work Krapp’s Last Tape, in which he directed Wilson as a performer. In 2026, he writes and directs 7 solitudes, a legacy work begun with Wilson based on Oscar Milosz, at the National Theatre in Kaunas, Lithuania, before recreating it in several countries. He adapts texts such as Three Women after Albee, UBU after Jarry, and The Jungle Book after Kipling.  

 

As a director, he works across multiple media in many countries. In 2026, he begins a collaboration with the Teatro Stabile in Catania, where he directs the film Don Q with Mikhail Baryshnikov. From 2020 to 2023, he was an associate artist at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where he directed the play interno/esterno, based on Maeterlinck and presented at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris; and from 2017 to 2020 at the National Theatre of Craiova. His work has been presented at Performa Biennial in New York, Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Venice, Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, Vicenza Festival, Scène nationale d’Orléans, among others.

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He directed the contemporary operas Le Messie by Eric Breton at the Opéra d’Avignon and Cubanacan by Roberto Valera at the Havana Opera. In 2024, he created a new version of Carmen for choreographer Israel Galvan at the Seville Opera and the Paris Philharmonic, followed by a world tour. He also develops staged musical works with composers such as Dom Bouffard and François Sarhan, and regularly collaborates with Solrey and Alexandre Desplat on the artistic direction of their concert performances and opera.