Theatre for a New Audience’s Artistic Council includes a diverse group of professionals who bring expertise in a wide variety of artistic disciplines to our Board of Directors. This fall, we will feature a few Artistic Council members in each newsletter so you can get to know our leadership.
Robert A. Caro: Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award and virtually every other major literary honor, Mr. Caro is a noted American historian best known for his acclaimed writings on New York urban planner Robert Moses and President Lyndon Johnson. He is currently finishing his final volume on President Johnson. A native New Yorker, Mr. Caro champions our Shakespeare education work in NYC Public Schools. Visit http://www.robertcaro.com/ to learn more.
David Scott Kastan: A preeminent Shakespeare scholar, Mr. Kastan is the first American to serve as a General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare, and author of many influential studies including Shakespeare After Theory (1999) and Shakespeare and the Book (2001). Mr. Kastan serves as the George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University, and has led many talk-back discussions with audiences at the Theatre’s Shakespeare performances. He is presently working on a new book on Shakespeare and Religion, as well as “The Invention of English Literature,” a project for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Mark Rylance: The recipient of the 2009 Scripps Award at our Annual Spring Gala, Mr. Rylance has had a long and diverse association with the Theatre. Click here for a spotlight article from our May 2009 newsletter.
Julie Taymor: A director of theater, opera and film, Ms. Taymor is the first woman to win the Tony Award for directing a musical (The Lion King), for which she also won Best Costume Design. In 1986, Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz invited Ms. Taymor to direct her first Shakespeare play at Theatre For a New Audience. That production, The Tempest, would later inform her film adaptation of the play, which stars Helen Mirren and will be released in 2010. Ms. Taymor went on to direct six more productions at the Theatre. She has also directed the films Titus, Across The Universe and Frida and the operas The Magic Flute (now in repertoire at the Met), Oedipus Rex and Grendel. She and the composer Elliot Goldenthal now serve as Honorary Co-Chairs on the Theatre’s Capital Campaign.