Robert Woodruff (director)

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Robert Woodruff (born 1947) is an American theatre director.

His undergraduate education culminated with his graduation Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from University at Buffalo in political science. He has a masters degree in theatre arts from San Francisco State University.

In 1976 Woodruff established his second theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a summer forum for the development of new plays that is still flourishing. It was here that Woodruff first worked with the writer Sam Shepard, on a libretto that Shepard had developed for the national bicentennial celebrations, The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill. The thirty-three year-old playwright was still better known in London than the States, and his collaborations with Woodruff marked a turning point in both men's careers. For the next five years Woodruff was virtually the sole director of Shepard's work, staging the American premiere of Curse of the Starving Class at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1978, the world premieres of Buried Child (1978) and True West (1980) in San Francisco and New York, and the touring productions of Tongues and Savage/Love, which Shepard co-authored with the performer Joseph Chaikin.

He has directed plays performed at Lincoln Center Theatre, The New York Shakespeare Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. He has taught at the University of California campuses at San Diego and Santa Barbara, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; he currently teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

It was recently announced that Woodruff will step down from his current Artistic Director position at the American Repertory Theatre following a 5 year tenure at the preeminent theater.