This was a virtual panel that occurred in March 2023. You can watch the video here.
Event Description Below:
Join us on Thursday, March 2, 2023, from 6:00 PM – 7:15 PM ET for a virtual panel about directing classics with Shana Cooper, Joseph Haj, and Robert O’Hara. This conversation will focus on the importance of and impulses to direct classic productions today, what’s exciting and challenging about these productions, their approach to the work, and how we define classics. ASL interpretation will be provided for the panel.
Panelist Bios:
Shana Cooper’s directing credits include classics and new work across the country from New York (Julius Caesar at Theatre For A New Audience and the world premiere of Barbara Hammond’s Terra Firma Off-Broadway with The Coop) to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, most recently directing Paula Vogel’s Indecent. Other directing credits include regional productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Old Globe, American Conservatory Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Court Theatre in Chicago, Studio Theater, Seattle Rep, California Shakespeare Theater, and Playmakers Repertory Company. Ms. Cooper is an assistant professor in Northwestern University’s Directing M.F.A. program, a company member at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington D.C. and has served as Associate Artistic Director of Cal Shakes (2000 to 2004) and Co-Founder of New Theater House (2008 to present). She received a 2014 Leadership U Grant, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group; a 2010 Princess Grace Award; a Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize from Yale School of Drama; and a Drama League Directing Fellowship. Ms. Cooper received her M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama. www.shanacooper.com
Joseph Haj is the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater. At the Guthrie, Haj has directed 10 productions to date, including A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ Holiday Classic (film), The Glass Menagerie, Cyrano de Bergerac (his own adaptation), West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, Sunday in the Park with George, King Lear, South Pacific, and Pericles. Prior to joining the Guthrie in 2015, Haj served as producing artistic director at PlayMakers Repertory Company.
Other directing credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V, and Pericles (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Hamlet and Pericles (Folger Theatre); The Tempest, Metamorphoses, Cabaret, Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, Nicholas Nickleby, The Illusion, Amadeus, Pericles, Big River, As You Like It, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Into the Woods (PlayMakers Repertory Company). Haj also directed maximum-security inmates in a production of Henry V, created and directed Voices with the rural community of Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina, and conducted workshops in the West Bank and Gaza.
Haj received an M.F.A. from The University of North Carolina before beginning a career in acting and working with many internationally renowned directors. He was named one of 25 theater artists who will have a significant impact on the field over the next quarter-century by American Theatre magazine, and he is the recipient of the 2000 NEA/White House Millennium Council Grant awarded to 50 American artists, 2014 Zelda Fichandler Award (SDCF), and 2017 Rosetta LeNoire Award (AEA). He is Second Vice President of the SDC Executive Board.
Robert O’Hara is the Tony Award-nominated director of Slave Play and is currently working on several film, television, and theater projects. He is a two-time Obie Award and two-time NAACP Award Winner whose work has been seen around the country. SDC, WGA.
