Matt Foss received his M.F.A. in acting from Chicago’s Roosevelt University and Ph.D. in theatre studies and directing from Wayne State University in Detroit. Recent professional credits include Red Tape Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Oracle Theatre, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, American Blues Theatre, The Jewish Ensemble Theatre and Tipping Point Theatre.

He has worked as a writer/adapter/director nationally and internationally. He adapted and directed Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for Oracle Productions in Chicago in 2014.  The production received Chicago Jeff Award Nominations for Outstanding Production, Director, Ensemble, and won for best new adaptation. In 2012 his production of Six Characters at Iowa State University received the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival's National Award for Outstanding Production of a Play and Outstanding Director of a Play.

In 2016, his touring production of The Glass Menagerie performed at Russia’s Moscow Art Theatre. In 2019 he wrote and directed a production of The Little Prince that performed at Moscow’s Meyerhold Theatre Center, performed as an actor in Russia’s Твой шанс Festival, and regularly studied and helped lead student groups to the Moscow Art Theatre School prior to 2020. The work of Dmitry Krymov, Yuri Butusov and the writings and work of Anatoly Efros and Maria Knebel are major inspirations and sources of study for Foss’s work.

In 2019, his adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front received the Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award.  The play had its professional premiere in Chicago in 2019, winning 6 Jeff Awards-including Best Production, Best Ensemble and Best New Work. 

Foss was the recipient of the ATHE/KCACTF Prize for Innovative Teaching in 2013 and the 2020 University of Toledo Edith Rathburn Outreach and Engagement Excellence Award.

Matt co-wrote and produced a short film, Sons of Toledo, a pseudo-documentary narrative short created by adapting the true stories of the city’s Black-owned barber shops around the issue of gun violence.  The film has won top prizes at national and international festivals and Matt’s work as a screenwriter has made the finals or recieved top recognitions from the Austin Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Screencraft Screenwriting Awards and the Oscars/Academy Nicholls Screenwriting Fellowship.