- Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (born 4 October 1941) is an internationally acclaimed American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s - or even the world's - foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer. He is best known for his collaborations with Philip Glass on "Einstein on the Beach", …
- Bertolt Brecht
"' (born "' February 10, 1898 - August 14, 1956) was an influential German socialist, dramatist, stage director, and poet of the 20th century.
- Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli (born Gianfranco Corsi on February 12, 1923), is an Italian film director. He is also an opera director, designer and producer of opera, theatre, film and television. Internationally, he is known for having directed the 1968 film version of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" for which he was nominated to receive an Academy Award.
- Francesca Zambello
Francesca Zambello (born 1956) is a leading American opera and theatre director. Zambello lived in Europe when she was a child, learning to speak French, Italian, German and Russian. She attended Moscow University in 1976 and graduated from Colgate University in 1978. She began her career as an Assistant Director to the celebrated opera director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. From 1984 to 1991 she was the Artistic Director of the Skylight Music Theater.
- Sam Mendes
Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director. As a stage director, he is probably best known for his 1998 production of "Cabaret", starring Alan Cumming. As a film director, he is best known for his debut film, "American Beauty", for which he won an Academy Award for Directing. In 2000, Mendes was made a Commander of the British Empire.
- Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor (born December 15 1952) is an American director of Broadway theatre and film. Taymor's work has been received many accolades from critics, and she has won several Tony Awards for her work, noted for its visual flair and colorful costuming choices.
- Lotfi Mansouri
Lotfi Mansouri (born Lotfollah Mansouri on 15 June, 1929 in Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian opera director and manager. He was an opera director from about 1960 onwards, and is most well-known for being the General Director of the Canadian Opera Company and of the San Francisco Opera from 1988 through 2001. In 1992 he became a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (a French civilian honor), and the subject of a 1998 biography
- Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Nunn CBE (born 14 January, 1940) is an English theatre and film director. He has held both the posts of Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Director of the Royal National Theatre, following in the footsteps of Sir Peter Hall. He was knighted by the Queen in 2002. He was born in Ipswich, England and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, where he began his stage career. In 1968, he was appointed Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, …
- Nicholas Hytner
Nicholas Hytner (born May 7, 1956) is an award-winning English producer and director.
- Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was a highly acclaimed French opera director. Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history in the same city. In 1952, he began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera "Boulevard Solitude". In 1962, he directed his first production of Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" in Düsseldorf.
- Pier Luigi Pizzi
Pier Luigi Pizzi (June 15, 1930 -) is an Italian opera director, set designer, and costume designer. Pizzi was born in Milan, Italy, and earned a degree in architecture at the Politecnico in Milan. Against the will of his skeptical father, he started working in the theater in 1951 with Giorgio Strehler, and then at the Teatro Tommaseo in Genova, which he soon brought together with Giorgio De Lullo and his theater troupe "Compagnia dei Giovani".
- John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (14 April, 1904 - 21 May 2000), known as Sir John Gielgud, was an Emmy, Grammy, Tony and Academy Award-winning theatre and film actor. He is generally regarded as one of the great English actors in history.
- Otto Schenk
Otto Schenk (born June 12, 1930 in Vienna, Austria) is an actor, theater director, and production designer. He is most famous in the United States for his lavish, realist, traditionalist productions at the Metropolitan Opera. He has also produced operas at the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, as well as smaller opera houses such as the Berlin State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, and the Hamburg State Opera.
- Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson (born April 15, 1959) is an Emmy-, BAFTA- and Academy Award-winning English actress, comedian, and screenwriter. She is also a patron of the Refugee Council.
- Götz Friedrich
Götz Friedrich was a German opera and theatre director. He was general manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1981 to 2000. He was a director at the Komische Oper Berlin in (East) Berlin and a student of Walter Felsenstein. He was a principal producer at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London. Friedrich was married to Ruth Maria Kubitschek, with whom he had a son Alexander. From his marriage to singer Karan Armstrong he had another son, Johannes.
- August Everding
August Everding (born 31 October 1928 in Bottrop, Germany, died 26 January 1999) was a German opera director and administrator. He studied at the Universities of Bonn and Munich, where launching his career in the 1950s. From 1968 onwards he worked as a director in Hamburg, before moving back to Munich in 1977 to become the General Intendant of the Bavarian State Opera. In the following years he also directed in Bayreuth, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Zurich Opera, …
- Peter Stein
Peter Stein is a critically acclaimed German director who established himself at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, a company he arguably brought to the forefront of German theatre. Born in Berlin, Stein grew up in an era defined by the Nazis. His father Herbert Stein was factory director of Alfred Teves, a motorcycle manufacturing firm that was employed to make automotive parts for the Nazi regime. Herbert was in charge of 250,000 forced laborers.
- Dario Fo
Dario Fo (born March 24, 1926) is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor, and composer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the proletarian classes. He currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife and leading actress Franca Rame.
- Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton began his career as a dancer but is largely remembered as a choreographer. Ashton was born at Guayaquil in Ecuador, in the artistic neighbourhood called Las Peñas, the original founding site of the city. When he was 13 he witnessed a life-changing event when he attended a performance by the legendary Anna Pavlova in the Municipal Theater in Lima, Peru. He was so impressed that from that day on he knew he would become a dancer.
- Jan Fabre
Jan Fabre (born 1958, Antwerp, Belgium) is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer. He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Between 1976 and 1980 he wrote his first scripts for the theatre and made his debut performances. From 1980 he began his career as a stage director and stage designer: *"Theater geschreven met een K is een kater" (1980), …
- Bartlett Sher
Bartlett Sher most recently directed the world premiere of "Singing Forest" by "Craig Lucas" at Intiman Playhouse; "The Light in the Piazza" by Lucas and Adam Guettel at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, for which he has received a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination; and "Mourning Becomes Electra" for Seattle Opera and New York City Opera. He has received national and international recognition for his work as a classical director, …
- Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler was one of the most influential directors of Italian opera and theatre.
- Jürgen Flimm
Jürgen Flimm was born in Gießen, Germany. He studied theory of drama, literature and sociology at the University of Cologne and started his career with his first position as assistant director at the Munich Kammerspiele in 1968. He had positions as director at the National Theatre Mannheim and as senior director at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg (1973/74), then he worked as freelance director and director at the Schauspiel Cologne.
- Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents (born July 14, 1918) is an American playwright, novelist, screenwriter, librettist and stage director.
- Simon Callow
Simon Philip Hugh Callow, CBE (born June 15, 1949) is an English stage, film and television actor. He was born in Streatham, London, England to Neil Francis Callow (British) and Yvonne Mary Guise (French) and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother. He studied at the Queen's University of Belfast before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre, London.
- Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider was a prolific theatre director and mentor responsible for over 100 productions in the American theatre. He directed the 1956 American premiere of "Waiting for Godot"; Edward Albee's "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"; Michael Weller's "Moonchildren" and "Loose Ends"; Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party", "The Dumb Waiter", and "The Collection"; and Bertolt Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle".
- Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli (February 28, 1903 - July 25, 1986) was a famous Hollywood director and accomplished stage director, often considered by critics to be the father of the modern musical.
- Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE (born 5 April 1942) is an English film director.
- Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh (June 23, 1910 - October 3, 1987) was a French dramatist.
- Luc Bondy
Luc Bondy (born 17 July 1948 in Zurich) is a Swiss theater and opera director.
- Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise was born in Blue Island, Illinois. His family later moved to Highland Park, where he attended high school. He was something of a rebel, playing in bands but paying little attention to school. Gary and some friends tried out for "West Side Story" as a lark, but Gary was hooked on acting for life by closing night. Gary credits his love for theatre to his drama teacher, Barbara Patterson .
- Kenny Leon
Kenny Leon is an African-American director notable for his work on Broadway and in regional theater. His success on Broadway has made him one of its foremost African-American directors. He gained prominance in 1988 when he became one of the few African-Americans to head a notable nonprofit theater company as the artistic director of Atlanta's Alliance Theatre Company. During Leon's tenure, the company staged premieres of Pearl Cleage's "Blues for an Alabama Sky", …
- Joe Mantello
Joe Mantello (born 27 December 1962) is a Tony Award-winning American actor and director best known for his work on Broadway productions of "Wicked", "Take Me Out" and "Assassins", as well as earlier in his career being one of the original Broadway cast of "Angels in America".
- Franco Dragone
Franco Dragone is a Belgian film and theatre director. His visibility greatly increased in the early 1990s after he directed and introduced the cutting-edge Cirque Du Soleil production "Mystère" at the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, a production which changed the nature of Production shows in Las Vegas. Cirque Du Soleil benefited greatly from Franco's work; while he only directed one other show in Las Vegas, "O" in 1998, …
- Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian, born January 4, 1940 in Ganzhou (Jiangxi province) in eastern China, is today a French citizen. Writer of prose, translator, dramatist, director, critic and artist. Gao Xingjian grew up during the aftermath of the Japanese invasion, his father was a bank official and his mother an amateur actress who stimulated the young Gao's interest in the theatre and writing.
- Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott OBE (18 April 1953 - 14 February 2007) was an English opera and theatre director and actor. His obituaries hailed him as "one of the brightest and most versatile directors of his generation" ("The Guardian"), and "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation" ("The Times"). His output ran the gamut of the theatrical and operatic repertoire, from musicals, …
- Scott Ellis
Scott Ellis is a Tony Award-nominated American stage director and television director. He has directed numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway productions, starting with the New York City Opera Company revivals at the New York State Theatre: "A Little Night Music" (1990) and "110 in the Shade" (1992) up to his current show, the musical "Curtains".
- William Ball
William Ball was a stage director and founder of the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT). He was awarded the Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award in 1959 for his production of Chekhov's "Ivanov" and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965 for his production of Molière's "Tartuffe", starring Michael O'Sullivan and Rene Auberjonois. He was also a noted director of operas. Ball founded the American Conservatory Theatre in Pittsburgh in 1965.
- Michael Wilson
Michael Wilson (b. 1964), currently serving as artistic director at Hartford Stage, is an American stage director working extensively in regional theatre and Off-Broadway. He is devoted to American artists and is completing a ten-year retrospective of the known and neglected works of Tennessee Williams. Mr.
- Raymond Benson
Raymond Benson (born September 6, 1955) is an American author best known for being the last official author of the adult James Bond novels. Benson was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from Permian High School in 1973. In primary school Benson took an interest in the piano which would later in his life develop into an interest in composing music.