STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS FOUNDATION SELECTED MAGIC THEATRE’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR LORETTA GRECO FOR THE 2018 ZELDA FICHANDLER AWARD
Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) presented the Zelda Fichandler Award to Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of the Magic Theatre, at a special ceremony hosted by Larry Goldfarb at Villa Taverna in San Francisco on January 31, 2019. The award was originally presented at an event in New York City on November 11, 2018 and accepted by Taylor Mac on Greco’s behalf.
“The Magic Theatre Board of Directors felt that an honor this important should be celebrated with Loretta’s peers in San Francisco,” states Goldfarb. “We are thrilled that Pam MacKinnon, SDC President, and Laura Penn, SDC Executive Director, among others, will be in our great city to present Loretta with the Zelda Fichandler Award.” Other guests at the event will include Ian Atlas, Sandra Hess, Kathryn Kersey, John Marx, Bennett and Molly Young, Michael John Garcés, Jonathan Moscone, and Eric Ting, to name a few.
Loretta Greco has been the Artistic Director of Magic Theatre since 2008, where she has proudly championed and premiered the work of Taylor Mac, Mfoniso Udofia, Jessica Hagedorn, Han Ong, Barbara Hammond, Luis Alfaro, John Kolvenbach, Linda McLean, Lloyd Suh, Theresa Rebeck, Sharr White, Polly Penn, Victor Lodato, Anna Ziegler, Richard Montoya, Penelope Skinner, and Octavio Solis. From 2012-2017, Greco collaborated with Magic’s favorite son, Sam Shepard on a five year “Sheparding America” series and directed the critically acclaimed legacy revivals of Buried Child and Fool for Love. Her most recent directing credits include Lynn Nottage’s SWEAT for American Conservatory Theater and the premieres of Hammond’s Eva Trilogy, Ong’s Grandeur, and Hagedorn’s Gangster of Love for Magic.
Ms Greco’s New York directing credits include: The Story, Lackawanna Blues, and Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater; A Park in Our House at New York Theatre Workshop as well as productions for The Women’s Project, Vineyard, INTAR, Actor’s Studio, Cherry Lane, and Naked Angels. Her regional directing credits include; The Realistic Jonses, Speed-the Plow, Blackbird at ACT; Life is a Dream at California Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet and Stop Kiss at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; and productions for South Coast Repertory, McCarter, Long Wharf, La Jolla Playhouse, among many others.
Prior to her Magic post, Greco served as Producing Artistic Director of New York’s Women’s Project and the Associate Director/Resident Producer at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect, a recipient of Bay Area Theater Awards, Drama League Fellowships, a Princess Grace Award and was a 2018 Fellow at the Sundance Institute/Luma Foundation Directors Retreat in Arles, France.
2018 Fichandler Finalists
Michael John Garcés
Michael John Garcés is the Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, a community-engaged ensemble in Los Angeles where he recently directed Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse. Other productions at Cornerstone include California: The Tempest by Alison Carey, Plumas Negras by Juliette Carillo, and Café Vida by Lisa Loomer. He is a company member at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., where his directing credits include Lights Rise on Grace by Chad Bekim and The Convert by Danai Gurira. Other recent productions include The Box by Sarah Shourd at Z Space and District Merchants by Aaron Posner at The Folger Theatre. Other credits include, in New York, BAM, The Atlantic, The Cherry Lane, INTAR, Repertorio Español, and, regionally, South Coast Repertory, A Contemporary Theatre, Hartford Stage, The Huntington Theatre, and The Children’s Theatre. Michael is the recipient of the Alan Schneider Director Award, the Princess Grace Statue Award, a TCG New Generations Grant, the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors Grant, a Van Lier Directing Fellowship, and a Drama League Director’s Residency.
Ron May
Ron is the founding Artistic Director for Stray Cat Theatre. Credits include Stupid Kids, The Dianalogues, The Laramie Project, A Clockwork Orange, [sic], The Normal Heart, The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love/Suicide, Trainspotting, Fat Pig, 4.48 Psychosis, A Number, Pulp*, Everything Will Be Different, An Impending Rupture of the Belly, columbinus*, Blackbird, The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Speech and Debate*, Learn to be Latina*, Octopus, Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, The Sparrow, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Heddatron, Wolves*, Sons of the Prophet, Chicks With Dicks, The Flick, The Whale, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, The Brothers Size*, Pluto, Sex with Strangers (co-production with Arizona Theatre Company), Stupid Fucking Bird, American Idiot, John, Native Son, Hir, Kiss, Mercury*, Hand to God, The Antipodes, and Let the Right One In. (* – asterisks = Zoni Award for Best Overall Production). This fall, he will head back to Chicago to direct Holmes and Watson for Buffalo Theatre Ensemble and will direct American Psycho: The Musical and Dance Nation for Stray Cat in the coming season.
Outside the kitty condo, Ron has directed for Phoenix Theatre (Buyer & Cellar*, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson*), Actors Theatre (Seminar, Hunter Gatherers, This, boom, Augusta, The Pursuit of Happiness, A View of the Harbor), Nearly Naked Theatre (As Bees in Honey Drown, Valparaiso); Mesa Community College (Good N Plenty*, Mr. Burns: a post-electric play); Black Theatre Troupe, ASU’s Mainstage, and Planet Earth Theatre (Shopping and Fucking, Polaroid Stories.) (* – asterisks = Zoni Award for Best Overall Production)
Local acting credits include Crumpet the Elf in The Santaland Diaries at Arizona Theatre Company, Francis Henshall in Phoenix Theatre’s One Man, Two Guv’nors, Gil Pepper in Stray Cat’s Year of the Rooster, Mike Daisey in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at Actors Theatre and The Trump Card at Stray Cat Theatre, Millett in Nearly Naked Theatre’s Fuddy Meers and Mason Marzac in Nearly Naked Theatre’s Take Me Out.
During the summer of 2001, he spent time in New York as a fellow in The Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab. Ron currently pays the bills as the Patron Data Services Manager for Arizona Theatre Company.
Arthur Rotch
Art has worked in Alaska theatre for thirty years, and is in his eleventh season as Artistic Director at Perseverance Theatre. He holds a BA in history from Harvard and a MFA in theatre from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His home is in Juneau with his wife, Akiko Nishijima, who is also a theatre artist, designer, and scenic painter. As Artistic Director at Perseverance, Art has commissioned half a dozen plays, and produced the premieres of Battles of Fire and Water (performed in Russia, English and Tlingit) by Dave Hunsaker and The Blue Bear by Luan Schooler and Leon Ingulsrud. Art is a member of USA829 (designers) and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society unions. Directing credits include Of Mice and Men, An Iliad, To Kill a Mockingbird, Annapurna, and The Arsonists for Perseverance. Art has designed dozens of productions for Perseverance, Anchorage Opera and many more Alaska producers; for regional theatres including People’s Light and Theatre Company, Sacramento Theatre Company, Aspen Opera Center; and, in New York City, Juilliard, Epiphany, and The Manhattan School of Music. Art is a member of the National Theatre Conference (nationaltheatreconference.org