Background
Akalaitis, JoAnne was born on June 29, 1937 in Cicero, Illinois, United States. Daughter of Clement and Estelle (Mattis) Akalaitis.
(JoAnne Akalaitis' exploration of America as an immigrant ...)
JoAnne Akalaitis' exploration of America as an immigrant and refugee society is complex, timely, and highly theatrical: a collage of images and events, documentary and testimony, that asks us to look again at the pressures and liberties of life in a foreign culture. GREEN CARD both describes and creates, for performers as well as audiences, the cacophony of sounds and barrage of images that confront those newly arrived in this land. The play moves from Ellis Island to Los Angeles, a city many consider the Ellis Island of the eighties. Originally produced by the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles. 6 M, 5 F, minimum; multi-racial cast
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director music educator writer
Akalaitis, JoAnne was born on June 29, 1937 in Cicero, Illinois, United States. Daughter of Clement and Estelle (Mattis) Akalaitis.
Akalaitis was pre-medical and studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1960. After choosing acting as a career, she 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.
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 the 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 in Chicago. Mississippi Akalaitis was the Andrew Mellon co-chair of the Directing Program at Juilliard School, and was the Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Flint Professor of Theater at Bard College until 2012.
In the early 1980s, Samuel Beckett reportedly attempted to shut down a production of his play, Endgame, which she was directing.
Her play Green Card is published by Broadway Play Publishing Incorporated.
(JoAnne Akalaitis' exploration of America as an immigrant ...)
Married Philip Glass, July 15, 1965 (divorced 1974). Children: Juliet, Zachary.
