Gregory Mosher (born 1949) is an American director and producer of stage productions at the Lincoln Center and Goodman Theatres, on and off-Broadway, at the Royal National Theatre, and in the West End. He is also a film director[1] and television director, producer, and writer. He currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for the Arts at Hunter College.
Born 1949 in New York City, Mosher attended Oberlin College, Ithaca College and the Juilliard School where he was the school's first directing student. After leaving Juilliard in his third year, he moved to Chicago to assist William Woodman, head of the Goodman Theatre, who appointed him to lead the newly formed Goodman Stage 2, one of the pioneering theatres of the 1970s Chicago theatre scene.[citation needed] Three years later, after Woodman's resignation, he became director of the Goodman. Beginning with a new version of Richard Wright’s Native Son, and focusing on new work, the Goodman soon gained wide national attention.[citation needed] Among his early work was the first production of David Mamet's American Buffalo.[2]
Lincoln Center
After seven seasons at the Goodman, Mosher was invited by former New York City mayor John V. Lindsay to head the theatre at Lincoln Center, which, despite the leadership of such theatre giants as Elia Kazan and Joseph Papp, had faltered through much of its twenty-year history. At the time of Lindsay's offer, the theatre had not produced a play in over four years; it had virtually no operating capital, little ability to generate it, and no community of artists to energize the stages.
Mosher launched an innovative production schedule and revolutionized marketing efforts, discarding the traditional subscriber arrangement to seek a younger, less affluent, and more diverse audience. These efforts, supported by a remarkable board and staff, and a freshly enthused giving community, quickly sparked theatrical life; the company's two houses were soon filled, and annual income rose within two years to nearly $45 million.
Lincoln Center Theater productions were adapted into a dozen feature films, presented in cast recordings, and on television for NBC and PBS. Productions at the Beaumont and the Newhouse Theaters frequently were extended or transferred for long runs on Broadway, as well as venues in England, Europe and Japan.[citation needed]
Broadway
In addition to Lincoln Center Theater shows on Broadway, Mosher has produced and/or directed several other productions. These include "A Streetcar Named Desire" (starring Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin), "James Joyce's The Dead", John Leguizamo's "Freak", and the 2010 production of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" (starring Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson), and "That Championship Season" (starring Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Noth, Jason Patric, and Kiefer Sutherland).
Mosher directed and produced the premieres of twenty-three of David Mamet's plays, beginning with American Buffalo in 1975. His Broadway production of Glengarry Glen Ross garnered Mamet the Pulitzer Prize. His collaboration with Samuel Beckett spanned the final decade of that writer's life, and included Beckett's own production of Endgame, and the Lincoln Center production of Waiting for Godot, directed by Mike Nichols.
During South Africa's apartheid period, Mosher was a frequent visitor to Johannesburg and Soweto. He organized the first-ever festival of South African drama (Woza Afrika!) at Lincoln Center, showcasing theatrical productions and funneling tens of thousands of dollars to Township arts groups and individual artists. In 2015, he traveled with a young company to perform Sophocles' "Antigone" in schools, community centers, and a juvenile prison in Nairobi and the Cape Town and Johannesburg townships. In 2017, he directed the American premiere[3] of Ferdinand Von Schirach's Terror for Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre.[4]
During the NEA "decency" debate of the early 1990s, Mosher, with the support of John Lindsay, was one of a very small group of arts administrators to decline the Endowment's annual grant.
President Lee C. Bollinger created the Arts Initiative at Columbia University in 2004 to change the role of the arts across the university, and hired Mosher as its first director, a position he stepped down from in Fall 2010.[citation needed] Since its inception the Initiative has developed programs to enliven the arts on campus and to link the university's intellectual mission to New York's cultural life. Among its programs are Passport to NYC, which provides Columbia students with free admission at 28 New York City museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and the Guggenheim.[citation needed]
Brook staged Tierno Bokar, based on the life of the Malian Sufi of the same name. The play was adapted for the stage by Marie-Hélène Estienne from Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar, le sage de Bandiagara by Amadou Hampate Ba (translated into English as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar).[5] Columbia University produced 44 related events, lectures, and workshops that were attended by over 3,200 people throughout the run of Tierno Bokar. Panel discussions focused on topics of religious tolerance and Muslim tradition in West Africa.[citation needed]
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.
Peter Stephen Paul Brook was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). With them, he directed the first English-language production in 1964 of Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss, which was transferred to Broadway in 1965 and won the Tony Award for Best Play, and Brook was named Best Director. He also directed films such as an iconic version of Lord of the Flies in 1963.
The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1946, the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 9, 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling, where it ran for 136 performances before closing on March 15, 1947. It has subsequently been adapted for the screen multiple times. The work tells the story of a number of alcoholic dead-enders who live together in a flop house above a saloon and what happens to them when the most outwardly "successful" of them embraces sobriety and reveals that he has been on the run after murdering his "beloved" wife.
Speed-the-Plow is a 1988 play by David Mamet that is a satirical dissection of the American movie business. As stated in The Producer's Perspective, "this is a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000)". As quoted in The Producer's Perspective, Jack Kroll of Newsweek described Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."
John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
American Buffalo is a 1975 play by American playwright David Mamet that had its premiere in a showcase production at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago. After two additional showcase productions, it opened on Broadway in 1977.
Bobby Gould in Hell is a play by the American playwright David Mamet. It premiered Off-Broadway in 1989 and also ran in London in 1991. The one-act play (45-minutes) updates the life of character Bobby Gould, from Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow.
The Cryptogram is a play by American playwright David Mamet. The play concerns the moment when childhood is lost. The story is set in 1959 on the night before a young boy is to go on a camping trip with his father. The play premiered in 1994 in London, and has since been produced Off-Broadway in 1995 and again in London in 2006.
Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois, but also to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for touring productions, as well as original productions that transfer to Broadway and other cities. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States. As many as 100 shows could be seen any given night from 200 companies as of 2018, some with national reputations and many in creative "storefront" theaters, demonstrating a vibrant theater scene "from the ground up". According to American Theatre magazine, Chicago's theater is "justly legendary".
A Life in the Theatre is a 1977 play by David Mamet.
Adam Rapp is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play Red Light Winter was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006.
Michael Kahn CBE is an American theater director and drama educator. He was the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. from 1986 until his retirement in 2019. He held the position of Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School from 1992 to 2006.
Albert Francis Innaurato Jr. was an American playwright, theatre director, and writer.
Habib Dembélé is a Malian actor, director, and author, and a candidate for the Malian Presidential elections of 2002 and 2018.
The Shawl is a four-act play by David Mamet. It premiered at the Goodman Theatre New Theatre Company in Chicago in 1985. The play concerns two men, John and Charles, who plan on defrauding Miss A out of her inheritance. The play scams and deceives to the very end, while emphasising the truth repeatedly.
American Buffalo is a 1996 drama film directed by Michael Corrente and starring Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz and Sean Nelson, the only members of the cast. The film is based on David Mamet's 1975 play, American Buffalo.
Peter L. Wittrock Jr., known as Finn Wittrock, is an American actor who began his career in guest roles on several television shows. He made his film debut in 2004, in Halloweentown High before returning to films in the 2010 film Twelve. After studying theater at The Juilliard School, he was a regular in the soap opera All My Children from 2009 to 2011, while performing in several theatrical productions. In 2011, he performed in playwright Tony Kushner's Off-Broadway play The Illusion and made his Broadway debut in 2012 as Happy Loman in the revival of Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman, directed by Mike Nichols.
Seth Numrich is an American stage, television, and film actor.
Bernard Gersten was an American theatrical producer. Beginning in the 1960s through the early 2000s, Gersten played a major role in shaping American drama and musical theatre.
Jack Koenig is an American actor best known for his work in theatre and television. He is most familiar to audiences for playing Michael Conway on Sex and The City, Dr. Levin in The Blacklist, Ronald Danzer in Gotham, Defense Attorney Swift in Law & Order, and Grant Ward in Madoff. For his work in the Off-Broadway production Tabletop, he was awarded the 2001 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.
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