JoAnne Akalaitis (born June 29, 1937, Chicago)[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]
Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college. After choosing acting as a career, she also 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. Additionaly, as a Mabou Mines founder, she conducted workshops in Mabou’s acting technique.[3]
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, 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, Samuel Beckett reportedly attempted to shut down a production of his play, Endgame, which she was directing.
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She has two children with her ex-husband, composer Philip Glass: Zachary (b. 1971) and Juliet (b. 1968).[2]