Playwright Mark Medoff, who won the Tony and the Olivier for his play Children of a Lessser God and who taught screenwriting and acting the University of New Mexico for 27 years, died on April 23 at the age of 79. I first met Mark Medoff at an audition. It was at the Mark Taper Forum annex in Los Angeles, and I was reading for him and the director Gordon Davidson, for a role in Mark’s new play, Children of a Lesser God. Though I had…
In every show he directed at my theatre, he’d always try to work in a cigar prop and hide a six-pack of beer somewhere on the set.
Civil Rights activism and theatre were integrally intertwined in the life’s work of the founder of Free Southern Theater and Junebug Productions.
We were just two gentlemen who worked on a show together, but oh, the music he made.
In his years at Yale Rep and ART, this extraordinarily versatile actor/director set the bar for generations of stage artists.
The title ‘arts management consultant’ doesn’t capture the wide-ranging passion and commitment she brought to her career and her life.
Debuting on Broadway 1951, he acted in Lincoln Center Rep and APA-Phoenix Rep at the start of a long New York and regional career.
The free writing she taught us may have opened us up, but she also subtly framed and shaped our sense of theatrical form.
Ntozake Shange brought her fearless poetry out of the basements and cafes into the theatre and reached the world.
How my teacher led me home.
