Jeff Cohen (playwright and theater director)

Jeff Cohen is an American theater director, playwright and producer.

Biography

Cohen grew up in a house across from Druid Hill Park in the Liberty Heights neighborhood of Baltimore, the setting for his play, Men of Clay..[1]

Career

Cohen is the founder and artistic director of Dog Run Repertory Company, and was the artistic director and founder of The Tribeca Playhouse, the Worth Street Theater Company, and The RAPP Arts Center (now the Connelly Theatre).[2]

Cohen plays include The Soap Myth, Men Of Clay (Best New Play 2005 - Baltimore City Paper), and adaptations of Chekhov including The Seagull: The Hamptons, (with various casts including Tammy Grimes, D. B. Sweeney, Neil Huff, Marin Hinkle, and Laura Linney's stage debut in 1990), Uncle Jack (published in Playing With Canons).[3]

Award-winning and notable Cohen productions include Four by Christopher Shinn (Lortel Award), the revival of The Normal Heart (Best Revival, The Public Theater - Drama Desk nomination), The Mystery of Attraction, by Marlene Meyer (Obie Award), The Moonlight Room, (Outer Critics nomination, 2 Lortel nominations), and The Tribeca Playhouse Stage Door Canteen (special 2002 Drama Desk Award).[4][5]

Cohen's play The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller, based on the short story by Christopher Stokes, had its world premiere in an Off Broadway production at the West End Theatre in New York, directed by Alfred Preisser, from September 10-October 3, 2010. The production was thereafter transferred intact to the ArcLight Theater in Manhattan where it ran from February 9 to March 13, 2011. It was a Critic's Pick in both the New York Times and Time Out New York.

His play, The Soap Myth, was originally presented at South Street Seaport before undergoing an extensive re-write and being sunsequently produced by the National Jewish Theater Foundation at the Roundabout Theater Company's Steinberg Theater Center in the Spring of 2012. The production, directed by Arnold Mittelman, featured Andi Potamkin, Greg Mullavey, Dee Pelletier and Donald Corren. That production caught the attention of prominent Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum who, in an editorial in the Jewish Forward (among other places) has championed the play as authentically capturing the tension between Holocaust survivors and Holocaust historians, and promoting a detente between the two groups.

The Soap Myth production was filmed and is planned for inclusion in 2013 in the prestigious British website, Digital Theatre.

References

  1. ↑ Jeff Cohen, John Barry, 3/29/2006, Baltimore City Paper
  2. ↑ Invited Dress Rehearsal of THE SOAP MYTH, Opening 7/13, July 10, 2009, Broadway World
  3. ↑ Invited Dress Rehearsal of THE SOAP MYTH, Opening 7/13, July 10, 2009, Broadway World
  4. ↑ Invited Dress Rehearsal of THE SOAP MYTH, Opening 7/13, July 10, 2009, Broadway World
  5. ↑ Some still deny the Holocaust, some simply refuse to listen, Stand-up comedy, targeted seriousness contemplate ‘how one survives surviving,’ The Villager, Jerry Tallmer, Volume 79, Number 5 | July 8–14, 2009, http://www.thevillager.com/villager_323/somestilldeny.html