American theatre director
JoAnne Akalaitis
(born June 29, 1937, in
Cicero, Illinois
)
[1]
[2]
is an
avant-garde
American theatre director and writer. She has won five
Obie Awards
for direction (and sustained achievement) and was a co-founder of the New York theater company
Mabou Mines
.
[3]
Life and career
[
edit
]
Akalaitis, of Lithuanian descent, was a
pre-med
student at the
University of Chicago
, and transferred to
Stanford University
to study philosophy, before leaving for San Francisco at age 22 without a degree.
After choosing acting as a career, she studied with the
Actor's Workshop
in San Francisco, the
San Francisco Mime Troupe
,
The Open Theater
Workshop in New York, and acting theorist
Jerzy Grotowski
in France. Additionally, as a
Mabou Mines
founder, she conducted workshops in Mabou's acting technique.
[4]
In addition to the
American Repertory Theater
? where she has directed
Endgame
,
The Balcony
(by
Jean Genet
) and
The Birthday Party
(by
Harold Pinter
) ? she has staged works by
Euripides
,
Shakespeare
,
Strindberg
,
Schiller
,
Tennessee Williams
,
Philip Glass
,
Jana?ek
, and her own work at the
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
,
New York City Opera
,
Goodman Theatre
, Hartford Stage,
Mark Taper Forum
,
Court Theatre
,
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
, and the
Guthrie Theater
. She is the former artistic director of the
New York Shakespeare Festival
and of the
Public Theater
(1991?1993),
[1]
and was artist-in-residence at the
Court Theatre
in Chicago.
Ms. Akalaitis was the
Andrew Mellon
co-chair of the Directing Program at
Juilliard School
, and was the Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Flint Professor of Theater at
Bard College
until 2012. She is the recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship
,
National Endowment for the Arts
grants, Edwin Booth Award, Rosamund Gilder Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre, and Pew Charitable Trusts National Theatre Artist Residency Program grant.
In the early 1980s, Samuel Beckett attempted to shut down a
postmodern
production of his play,
Endgame
, which she was directing.
[5]
Akalaitis is a Fellow of the
New York Institute for the Humanities
and lives in Manhattan, New York.
Family
[
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]
She has two children with her ex-husband, composer
Philip Glass
: Juliet (b. 1968) and Zachary (b. 1971).
[3]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Judith Graham, ed. (1993).
Current Biography Yearbook, 1993
. New York: H. W. Wilson. p. 8.
- ^
Ian Herbert, ed. (1981). "AKALAITIS, JoAnne".
Who's Who in the Theatre
. Vol. 1. Gale Research Company. pp. 5?6.
ISSN
0083-9833
.
- ^
a
b
Don Shewey,
"Rocking the House That Papp Built"
,
The Village Voice
September 25, 1990, accessed August 21, 2007.
- ^
Gholson, Craig.
"JoAnne Akalaitis"
,
BOMB Magazine
, Spring 1983, accessed July 20, 2011.
- ^
Mel Gussow,
"Stage: Disputed 'Endgame' in Debut"
,
The New York Times
, December 20, 1984.
References
[
edit
]
- "AKALAITIS, Joanne"
in
World Who's Who
(Routledge ? Taylor and Francis Group). Accessed September 1, 2006. (Subscription required.)
External links
[
edit
]
- Bio
at American Repertory Theater
- Bio
at Bard College
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