The Making of Jelly's Last Jam: In November 1992, SDC Foundation hosted a conversation with the creative team behind Jelly's Last Jam on Broadway: George C. Wolfe (book and direction), Hope Clarke (choreography), Susan Birkenhead (lyrics), Luther Henderson (music arrangement and additional music), Robin Wagman (set design) and Jules Fischer (lighting design) to discuss their creative process. They discuss the journey from workshops and a production at the Mark Taper Forum to the addition of Wagm...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 6 min
Director Playwright Collaboration: On Tuesday, March 29, 1988, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and New Dramatists hosted a seminar on the director-playwright relationship with directors Tony Giordano, Pamela Berlin, Paul Benedict, and Woodie King, Jr., and writers Steve Carter, Jack Heifner, John Bishop and Reinaldo Povod. This lively ninety-minute conversation includes discussions of the director's role on a new play, what playwrights look for in a director, and colorful nature of...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 26 min
At the SDC Foundation's Choreography Symposium in 1986, choreographers Wayne Cilento (Tony Award for The Who's Tommy ), Graciela Daniele (8 Tony nominations for Best Choreography), Janet Watson ( Ragtime ) and Ted Pappas ( Paradise Off-Broadway and the Broadway revival of Zorba ) spoke with director Marshall Mason about choreography in musical theatre at the time. The panel discusses how each began his or her career, their creative processes and the mentors that led them to Broadway. A major top...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 27 min
A View from the Bridge: On December 15, 1986, director Tony Giordano, designers Hugh Landwehr and Dennis Parichy and actors Michael Fischetti, Jennifer Van Dyck and Diane Martella spoke with moderator Amy Saltz at New Dramatists about their work on a traveling co-production of A View From The Bridge , produced by theatres in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany. Having taken place after two of the four runs, this conversation is a rare opportunity to hear artists from various disciplines talk...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 24 min
In April 2010, Edie Cowan moderated an hour-long roundtable discussion with Broadway choreographers Kathleen Marshall and Jerry Mitchell and dance arrangers David Chase and Mark Hummel. They discuss the role of the dance arranger, who works with the choreographer to take what the composer has written and changes it to fit the choreographer's vision of each dance. Jerry Mitchell talks about choreographing a dance for The Full Monty before hearing the music and then having the arranger fit music t...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr
In February 2010, director Michael Mayer, who won a Tony Award for Spring Awakening and recently directed American Idiot , and choreographer Rob Ashford, who won a Tony for Thoroughly Modern Millie and was nominated for The Wedding Singer , Curtains and Cry-Baby , were featured in a Director/Choreographer Network discussion on Working in Film. Michael Mayer recalls being asked to direct A Home at the End of the World and saying yes without hesitating, without any film experience. Rob Ashford tal...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 5 min
Susan Stroman: In January of 1994, Susan Stroman sat down for an hour-long discussion of her career as a choreographer. She talks about working on Crazy For You , Kiss of the Spider Woman , and Show Boat , noting how bad experiences are necessary to make the good ones what they are. Other topics include working with a cast of 73 actors, working with director Hal Prince, movie musicals and the lack of copyright protection for choreography. For wonderful advice and great stories from a five-time T...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr
In March of 1985, during the original Broadway run of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George , Susan Einhorn interviewed Tony Award-winning librettist and director James Lapine about how a director keeps a show in shape. In this seventy-five-minute interview, Lapine discusses replacements, understudies, stage managers and his relationship with the cast after a show opens. He talks about working with Sondheim and how his role in their relationship evolved from writing to directing. Other topic...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 16 min
In October of 1984, Hungarian-Canadian director John Hirsch, who directed classical theatre for thirty-two years and served as Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival from 1981-1985, sat down with Richard Harden for a ninety-minute roundtable discussion. He talks about the definition of classical theatre, which he defines as plays which survive the test of time and speak to audiences of all ages, and classicists, who submerge themselves in a single subject. Hirsch and Harden disc...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 25 min
In December of 1987, famous avant-garde director Robert Wilson sat down for a One-on-One conversation with Tony Award-winning lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. They discuss Wilson's three major influences: the dance work of George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, the first piece of theatre he created with a deaf, mute child, and the poet Christopher Knowles, who once repeated the words "tape recorder" for ten minutes at the end of a performance piece. He talks about creating different kinds of ...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 29 min
In 2002, Lincoln Center dramaturg Anne Cattaneo moderated a One-on-One discussion with prolific British theatre, film, television and opera director Richard Eyre. He talks about directing The Crucible in the 1970's and in 2002, and how he sees the story as a fable rather than as a metaphor for the McCarthy Era as a result of growing up outside the country. He tells his audience about the importance of casting good actors, and his rejection of the idea of "concept" directing. They discuss running...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 16 min
In 2002, Arthur Penn sat down for a One-on-One conversation with SDCF Executive Director David Diamond to discuss his triple-threat career in theatre, television and film. He tells the story of his launch into theatre from the army, followed by an early career in TV and the Actors Studio. He talks about his relationship with Bill Gibson which launched two of his biggest successes: The Miracle Worker and Two for the Seesaw , and shares humorous anecdotes about working with Lillian Hellman, Sammy ...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 20 min
In June 1995 three-time Tony Award-winning director Gene Saks spoke with David Diamond in a One-on-One Interview about his journey through the many aspects of his directing career. Topics of this 90-minute conversation include the challenges of directing comedies and musicals, working with writers, and the differences between directing theatre and film. He talks about the use of spectacle as cover-up for story and about the ideal collaborative process in which good ideas come from all members of...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 34 min
In this One-on-One conversation with Lincoln Center Dramaturg Anne Cattaneo, Mabou Mines founder and famed director JoAnne Akalaitis shares her wisdom with a full room gathered at Arts Connection in November, 1995. They discuss her days with Mabou Mines and the experimental theatre of the 60s and 70s, and the desire for a broader audience that motivated her transition to regional theaters, where theatre was part of the community. Akalaitis encourages young directors to do their own work and to s...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 31 min
Scott Elliott: At the 2003 SDC Directing Symposium, Scott Elliott, Artistic Director of The New Group and Callaway Award winner for Excellence in Directing, spoke to a room full of young directors for 90 minutes about his transition from acting in Broadway musicals to becoming an award winning director and artistic director of a successful Off-Broadway theatre company. He describes paying rent with charge cards in order to be creatively ambitious in his early directing days, and the element of c...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 14 min
Vinnette Carroll: In 1999, after receiving SDC's "Mr. Abbott Award," director/ playwright/actress Vinnette Carroll spoke with SDC Executive Director David Diamond about her life as the first African American woman to direct on Broadway. She describes her mother's intense desire for her children to be cultured and how she encouraged Carroll to pursue the arts. She speaks about breaking into acting with a production of Caesar and Cleopatra and the joy she eventually finds as a director in collabor...
Apr 02, 2014•1 hr 26 min
Andre Bishop: In this Directors Training Symposium from 1996, Lincoln Center Theater's artistic director Andre Bishop talks about his responsibilities as an artistic director, the qualities he looks for when hiring a director, his belief that many young directors lack knowledge in certain areas, how theatre as a whole can and must develop the next generation of directors, the key difference between commercial productions and the not-for-profit theatre, and why not-for-profit theatres must do mor...
Apr 02, 2014•50 min
Gregory Mosher: In May of 1988, Peter Van Zandt moderated a talk with director and Lincoln Center Theatre artistic director Gregory Mosher, just weeks after the opening of the Broadway production of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow . In a conversation that focuses on Mosher's longstanding relationship with Mamet, and Mosher's leadership of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985, topics include Mosher and Mamet's first meeting in Chicago in 1974; the ambiguity of Speed-the-Plow ; Mamet's preference for wo...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 27 min
In 1999, SDCF held a panel on Managing Your Career featuring panelists Steve Bolerjack, Leigh Giroux, Noah Kimerling, Brett Singer and Ross Wisdom to discuss their various areas of expertise - accounting and taxes, legal issues, and publicity - and how to apply their knowledge to better run the business of your artistic career so that you can grow and develop your professional life. These noted industry professionals share their approaches and answer questions regarding topics as varied as the H...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 29 min
In May of 1988, esteemed Shakespearean acting teacher Ada Brown Mather discussed the bard's work with three of its contemporary master directors: Zoe Caldwell, Gerald Freedman, and Stuart Vaughn. Mather first introduces us to the work of the panelists, and then she begins a discussion framed by the questions "why do we get so excited about how Shakespeare is directed from age to age?" In this two-hour long session the audience gains access to insights on rehearsal practices, the directorial tech...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 21 min
Susan H. Schulman: In March of 1994, not long after the close of her hit Broadway production of The Secret Garden , Susan H. Schulman sat down with Director Melvin Bernhardt to discuss her life in the theatre. Ms. Schulman walks a captivated audience of early-career Directors and Choreographers through her career to date, spanning neighborhood shows on her family's Brooklyn stoop as a small girl through her most recent Broadway production. We learn that it all began for her in the garage studio ...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 18 min
Lynne Taylor-Corbett: In this discussion with Director-Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett in February of 2000, listen to a two-time Tony nominee share her research into the complex history and techniques of competitive swing dance. She tells about the improvisation and experimentation involved during her workshop process to adapt this dance form for the Broadway stage in the 1999 production of Swing! We also get a glimpse of the stories that influenced her career; from her first encounter with a...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 21 min
For decades, Marshall Mason and Lanford Wilson have been seminal figures in the theatre industry. Their artistic partnership spans nearly forty years and is recognized as being among the most enduring in the American Theatre. Their work together - from Balm in Gilead to the more recent Book of Days - stands as some of the most beloved in the American canon. In 2002, New York's Signature Theatre devoted its entire season to the plays of Lanford Wilson, including the New York City premiere of Book...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 26 min
In this ninety minute discussion with Arthur Penn, catch a glimpse of the artistic processes which make this legend of directing such an artistic triple threat. To date, he is still the only individual to be nominated for a Tony, an Emmy and an Oscar for the same property - The Miracle Worker . In May of 1987, Penn sat down with Melvin Bernhardt for this candid discussion on his style of directing and its application to stage and screen. We learn that Penn's direction is one of calculated chaos,...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 27 min
Ming Cho Lee: World renowned designer for the stage Ming Cho Lee spoke to a crowd of early career directors and choreographers in April of 1999 at SDCF's annual Symposium. The focus of this discussion was working with Shakespeare, and in this ninety minute address Ming explains why he will go anywhere to work on the Bard's cannon. With wit and humor he tailors his remarks to fit his audience, explaining how he communicates with directors. He speaks of his love of teaching, and of why the basis f...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 1 min
Edward Albee: Famed playwright Edward Albee sat for an interview with frequent collaborator Larry Sacharow before an audience of professional theatre artists and students at Fordham University in December of 2000. In a room composed predominately of professional and aspiring directors, Albee was quick to distinguish himself as a professional director. He recalled that his first inclination to become a director spawned from the process by which he writes for the stage. While developing his early ...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 39 min
Howard DaSilva and Alfred Drake: Beginning in January 1985, SDCF held a series of interviews with Actors Who Direct in order to explore with live audiences of theatre enthusiasts, professional theatre artists, and SDC Members and guests the processes, experiences and craft of this brand of professional artistic hybrid. In the first installment of this series, moderator Ike Shambelan met with Alfred Drakeand Howard Da Silva for a discussion about these very issues at New Dramatists. Da Silva and ...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 27 min
In January of 2000, Joe Dowling met with SDC Members and guests at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre to discuss his career in the classics. It is a career that began long before his appointment as Artistic Director at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theatre in 1995, and even before becoming the Artistic Director of Ireland's National Theatre, the Abbey, at the age of 27. As family legend goes, his first artistic note to an actor was at the age of three, and it was instant recognition that he would spend his life...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 29 min
Harold Prince: In 2002, theatre icon Harold Prince gave the opening remarks to a packed house of esteemed theatre artists, professional directors and choreographers, and aspiring early-career post graduates at SDCF's annual Directing Symposium. The focus of Mr. Prince's address, as well as the focus of the weekend's series of panel discussions and lectures, was "Creating the American Musical". Throughout this ninety minute discussion 'Hal' embodies the ideal of the venerable Broadway veteran, la...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 20 min
Gene Saks: In January of 1987, SDCF brought one of Broadway's most beloved directors to New Dramatists for a conversation about comedy. Collaborators are quoted as saying "I would like to be surgically attached to his hip" and "I wouldn't mind if I never worked with another director again". In this 90 minute interview, you'll learn how Tony Award winner Gene Saks has engineered a career as one the most respected directors in American theatre. He is known for his understanding and protection of t...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr 11 min
