Stageworks Theatre is a theatre, based in the Tampa Bay Florida area, founded by Anna Brennen. To provide the highest quality professional theatre which respects, ignites and celebrates the human spirit while challenging the thresholds of intolerance and insensitivity. [1]==History== Anna Brennen, Founder, Producing Director and permanent staff of Stageworks Theatre Company, Inc., received her formal theatre training at Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley. She studied ifn advanced private classes in New York City with Sandy Meisner (Neighborhood Playhouse), Mira Rostova (Moscow Art Theatre), Wynn Handmann (American Place), and Lloyd Richards (Yale University Drama School). In 2006, Anna was given the Artist of the Year Award by the Mayor of the city of Tampa, Pam Iorio.
Anna's professional acting credits include understudying Colleen Dewhurst in Hamlet, as well as the three leads in Much Ado About Nothing for the New York Shakespeare Festival. She has also appeared with the Theatre for New York City, Playwrights Horizons and the Chelsea Theatre in New York City. New York directing credits include Delicate Balance, Happy Days and Perry Smith & Dick Hickock (an original). In California, she directed Twelfth Night, House of Bernarda Alba and The Lesson.
As a playwright, Anna's first play, Sleepless Dancer (Victims 3), had an Equity showcase production at N.E.T.W.O.R.K. in New York City in 1980. She was a recipient of a Florida Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship in 1981. In 1989, she received an Emerging Artists grant from the Hillsborough County Arts Council for her new play, Echo Nevada, in 1991 the Hillsborough Arts Council honored her with the individual Artist Award. " In Tampa, she has produced and/or directed over 90 mainstage shows.
Her directing credits include: Body of Water,(http://studio10.tv/day/tuesday/segment.aspx/101026/A_Body_of_Water), Shining City, Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, Rupert's Birthday, Side By Side By Sondheim, Master Harold And The Boys, Talking With, The Maids, A Conversation With Georgia O'Keeffe, The Fantasticks, A Christmas Memory, Search For Signs, Execution of Justice, Uncle Vanya, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Good Times Are Killing Me, Molly Sweeney, Moon For The Misbegotten, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, The Rose Tattoo, Kindertransport, Cripple Of Inishmaan, Trip To Bountiful, That Championship Season, Tale of the Allergist' Wife (Co-director), Angels in America: Part I, Waiting for Godot, The Laramie Project, Le Derniere Grisette, Turn of the Screw, Hypoxia Zone, Medea, All My Sons, A Picasso, The Sisters Rosensweig, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Chairs, and Private Lives.
Awards:
• Anna Brennen, Founder Mayor’s Artist of the Year 2006– Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce • Stageworks Theatre Neighborhood Builder of the Year 2007 Bank of America • Main Stage Productions Named ‘The Best Of” in at least four categories by both The Tampa Tribune and Creative Loafing for the last five years. Finalist in 2009 Tampa Bay Business Journal Non profit of the Year.