Paul Mason Barnes is an award-winning theatre director, administrator, and teacher. Inspired to get off the sidelines and leap into the political fray after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 Electoral College vote, he turned despair into action and became a dedicated volunteer and top grassroots fundraiser for Pete Buttigieg's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. He was a member of the Pete for America (PFA) Arts Policy Advisory Committee and, when then-Mayor Pete suspended his campaign, made a lateral transfer to the Biden-Harris APAC. He executed a near-death, 360-degree spin out on black ice returning from a Pete rally in Reno, got lost on a detour during a 10 PM downpour in Louisville on his way to South Bend for Pete's formal declaration of candidacy, and ran into an almost burning building to rescue a "Pete/2020" plastic water bottle before fleeing the climate fire about to engulf his neighborhood, giving new meaning to the term "fanboy."
Barnes's directing work encompasses classics, new work, musicals, and revues. His productions have been seen by audiences from one end of the country to the other, and have been reviewed by the Wall Street Journal ("Authoritative, masterful"), Newsweek ("Superb"), Washington Post ("Lucid, compelling"), Opera News ("Profound"), Denver Post, ("Stirring, wrenching"), Saint Louis Post-Dispatch ("Vivacious, brilliant, bold, impassioned"). He has founded two theatre companies: the Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, Oregon, and the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota, of which he is an Associate Artist, and former Artistic Director. Before that, he served as Conservatory Director/Associate Artistic Director at PCPA Theaterfest-Pacific Conservatory Theatre in Santa Maria, California, Education Director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Director of Drama at Lincoln High School in Stockton, California. He is in regular demand as speaker and workshop leader at theatre companies and training programs across the country.
Born on the east coast, but transplanted to the west, where he has spent most of his life, Barnes makes his home in Ashland, Oregon with his partner, actor-director James Edmondson. This is his first foray as an author.