Sharon Ott

Sharon Ott began her 25-year American theater career in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she worked with the experimental theater ensemble, Theatre X, sharing an Obie award with other company members for their production of A Fierce Longing. She was a resident director at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater where she directed the world premiere of Amlin Gray’s Obie award winning, How I Got That Story. In 1984 she became Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theater, and for the next 13 years built that company from a small regional theater to a major national institution, accepting the Tony Award in 1997 as Outstanding Regional Theater. She later became the Artistic Director of Seattle Repertory Theatre where she oversaw the initiation and completion of a 15-million-dollar endowment fund. She has directed across the country at theaters including the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, Arena Stage, Huntington Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons and many others, as well as San Diego Opera, Opera Colorado and Seattle Opera. She currently is a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design and serves as the Artistic Director for the performing arts department. She has won many awards for her directing and producing including several Bay Area Theater Critic’s Awards and Hollywood Dramalogue Awards, an Elliot Norton Award (Boston,) and the Paine Knickerbocker Lifetime Achievement Award (San Francisco).