Brian Michaels as born 1948 in London. He studied philosophy  at the University of Sussex from 1966-1969, and is sepcialized in German philosophy of 19th and 20th centuries.

He worked as director, artistic director and actor for the University Theatre. 

He worked with the Indian community in Wolverhampton in 1970 as part of the community culture project runned by the Council for Race Relations and is co-founder of Gallus Centre in Frankfurt (in 1975), a multi-cultural project with the aim to provide cultural platforms for different immigrant communities in Frankfurt.

In 1978 he founded Teatro Siciliano, the first immigrant theatre in West Germany. The success was immediate and enormous, resulting  a major tour throughout Italy in 1980-accompanied by German television. 

At the same time , he founded the Gallus Theater - one of the first major alternative theatre venues in Germany. 30 years on, this theatre is still a vibrant  and important part of the alternative venues to state subsidised theatre.

In 1984 he was invited to develop his first project for the State Theatre in Stuttgart-one of Germany's leading theatres. He created his own version of Homer's Odyssey with great success. This lead to further directing projects in Stuttgart for the State Opera House.  

Parallel to working in Stuttgart, he worked at a number of major European festivals in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

In 1994, he became Professor for Acting and Directing at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, one of the most important centres for artistic training in whole Germany. It followed co-productions with international partners from Israel, USA, Holland, Romania.

From 2002 onwards, despite continuing his work at major opera, at theatre festivals and at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Brian Michaels laid more emphasis on creating his own projects based on themes that were existentially important to him, like his present project about the ancient Egypt.