Bio

Andy Kirshner uses film, theatre, music, and scholarship to explore complex social, political, and historical questions. A composer, writer, director, singer, and actor, his interdisciplinary body of work ranges from film, to opera, to experimental music-theatre, to performance art. Andy’s unique, hybrid creations have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michigan Council on the Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Education. His documentary art film, Manufacturing Hate: 10 Questions for Henry Ford, premiered at the Ojai Film Festival in 2021 and has since played at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the American Jewish Archives, the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas, and in many other community and educational settings. Liberty’s Secret, his musical-comedy feature film and satire of American politics, toured film festivals in the U.S. and Germany, has been translated into Portuguese, German, and Thai, and is available on several streaming channels internationally. Currently, Andy is working on a new documentary, Sex Radical, about the late 19th-century sex and marriage reformer, Ida Craddock, and her 10-year struggle against the evangelical censor, Anthony Comstock.

Andy’s earlier experimental music-theatre work includes a 25th-century morality play narrated by a cyborg (The Museum of Life and Death) and a musical tragicomedy for jazz crooner and full orchestra inspired by the mythos of Frank Sinatra, (An Evening with Tony Amore.) He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, the first faculty member ever to be jointly appointed by the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and the Stamps School of Art and Design. Kirshner holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan in Music Composition, where his principal teacher was William Bolcolm.