JoAnne Akalaitis

JoAnne Akalaitis (born June 29, 1937) is a Lithuanian-American[1] 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. In addition to the American Repertory Theater - where she directed Endgame and The Balcony - 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, 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. She has two children from her marriage to composer Philip Glass: Zachary (b. 1969) and Juliet (b. 1971).