JoAnne Akalaitis

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JoAnne Akalaitis (born Chicago June 29, 1937)^[1] is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction (and sustained achievement) and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.^[2]

In addition to the American Repertory Theater - where she has directed Endgame, by Samuel Beckett; The Balcony, by Jean Genet; and The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter - she has staged works by Euripides, Shakespeare, Strindberg, Schiller, Beckett, Genet, Williams, Philip Glass, Janáček, and her own work at 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 was artist in residence at the Court Theatre. Ms. Akalaitis was the Andrew Mellon Co-chair of the Directing Program at Juilliard School, and is currently the Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Flint Professor of Theater at Bard College. 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, Beckett attempted to shut down a production of Endgame directed by Joanne Akalaitis.[1]

She has two children with her ex-husband, composer Philip Glass: Zachary (b. 1971) and Juliet (b. 1968).^[2]

Notes

References

• "AKALAITIS, Joanne" in World Who's Who (Routledge – Taylor and Francis Group). Accessed September 1, 2006. (Subscription required.)

External links

• Bio at American Repertory Theatre
• Bio at Bard College

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