Ben Yalom

FoolsFURY Founder

Ben has directed many foolsFURY productions including the world premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s Port Out, Starboard Home (Z-Space and La Mama), Monster in the Dark, the US premiere of Fabrice Melquiot’s The Devil on All Sides (which he also translated), Don DeLillo's Valparaiso, the West Coast premiere of Martin Crimp's seminal avant-garde work Attempts on Her Life, and others. He directed the controversial musical Bangers’ Flopera with Inverse Theater in the New York Fringe Festival and the New York Musicals Festival. Ben has also worked with A.C.T., the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Magic Theatre, Playground, the Aurora Theatre, and Encore Theatre (San Francisco), The Cell (New York), and Théâtre Ange Magnétique (Paris).  

Ben has taught at Stanford University, California College of the Arts, Loyola Marymount University, the Lee Strasberg Institute (NYU/Tisch), UC Riverside, CSU Fresno, the La Mama Umbria Director’s Symposium, the National Theater Institute, Vassar College, the Berkeley Rep School of Theater, and elsewhere. He recently designed a new theater program at the United Nations International School in New York. He served for five years on the Board of the Network of Ensemble Theaters.

Ben holds a BA in Political Science and Honors in the Humanities from Stanford University. He also holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his fiction and essays have appeared in magazines nationwide. His translations of Fabrice Melquiot’s The Devil on all Sides and Albatross were recently published by Exit Press.

Ben lives in Encinitas with his wife, Anisa Yalom MD, where they wrangle three wild children, and protectors of the hearth White Kitty and Terror, the bearded dragon.