Peter Meineck was born in Melton Mowbray, England and grew up in New Malden. His earned a BA in Ancient World Studies in the departments of Greek and Latin at University College London and his PhD in Classics at the University of Nottingham. He is Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University, Honorary Professor in Humanities at the University of Nottingham and an affiliated faculty member in Drama at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He specializes in Greek drama, performance and literature, cognitive theory applied to antiquity and the performance of trauma in antiquity. He has also held teaching posts at Princeton University, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and USC. He is the director of Aquila Theatre's public programming and has implemented arts and humanities programs aimed at veteran and civilian dialogues, At-Risk students in Harlem and The Bronx, and underserved communities via public libraries. His public programs received a Chairman's Special Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities and have been presented at the Obama and Bush White Houses, the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Federal Hall National Memorial and throughout the United States. Fellowships include the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, the University of California San Diego, the Onassis Foundation, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. Peter Meineck worked extensively in London theatre and founded Aquila Theatre in 1991. His stated aim with Aquila is to bring the greatest works to the greatest number and he has developed a sixty-seventy city American tour that brings classical drama to communities of all sizes across the USA. He also developed regular seasons Off-Broadway in New York City and has produced classical drama at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Ancient Stadium at Delphi, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He has directed and/or produced over fifty stage productions including Agamemnon, Ajax, Wasps, Coriolanus, The Iliad Book One, Comedy of Errors, The Invisible Man, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Prometheus Bound, Catch-22, An Enemy of the People, Murder on the Nile. Peter Meineck has translated and published several Greek dramas including Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus Tyrannus, and Ajax, Euripides' Trojan Women, and Herakles and Aristophanes' Clouds, Wasps, Birds and Frogs. He has also adapted the opera libretto for Cherubini’s Medee performed at Carnegie Hall and wrote and directed a new stage adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. He was a consultant on the film I Am Legend. Other stage adaptations or co-adaptations include Frankenstein, The Odyssey, The Man Who Would Be King, A Female Philoctetes, and The Canterbury Tales.
Personal life
Peter Meineck married ballerina Desiree Sanchez in 2004. He currently serves as Assistant Chief of the Bedford Fire Department in New York and is also an Emergency Medical Technician.
Awards
1999: USC Honors College Mortar Board Teaching Award
