Friday morning, 9:30 am Session
Keynote Speaker Johanna Pfaelzer
Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer joined Berkeley Rep in the 2019/20 season as its fourth artistic director. Prior to her arrival at Berkeley Rep, she served for 12 years as the artistic director of New York Stage and Film (NYSAF), a New York City-based organization dedicated to the development of new works for theatre, film, and television. Notable works that were developed under Johanna’s leadership at NYSAF include the Tony Award-winning Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Humans by Stephen Karam, Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell, The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, Junk and The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music by Taylor Mac, The Homecoming Queen by Ngozi Anyanwu, The Great Leap by Lauren Yee, John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer- and Tony Award–winning Doubt, The Fortress of Solitude by Michael Friedman and Itamar Moses, The Jacksonian by Beth Henley, and Green Day’s American Idiot. In addition, Johanna is proud to have developed the work of many notable writers, both established and early-career, including Jocelyn Bioh, Zach Helm, Halley Feiffer, Billy Porter, Lucy Thurber, Duncan Sheik, V (formerly Eve Ensler), Steven Sater, Jaclyn Backhaus, Patricia Wettig, and Marcus Gardley. She was formerly a producing director of Zena Group, and served for five years as the associate artistic director of American Conservatory Theater. Johanna is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Actors Theatre of Louisville Apprentice Program, and has taught in the MFA Theatre Program at Columbia University School of the Arts. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Russell Champa, and their son, Jasper.
Photo by Cheshire Isaacs
Mary Zimmerman Photo by Liz Lauren
A Conversation with Mary Zimmerman
Mary Zimmerman will be in conversation with CETA President Gale Caswell and receive CETA’s Visionary Award.
Mary Zimmerman is a playwright and director of theatre and opera based in Chicago. She is the 1998 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the 2002 Tony Award, Obie, Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Awards for Best Director (for her play Metamorphoses), and many Chicago Joseph Jefferson Awards, including Best Production and Best Director; and her plays have twice been named by Time Magazine as Best Production of the Year nationally. She is a member of Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago, an Artistic Associate of the Goodman Theatre, and The Jaharis Family Foundation Endowed Chair of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, where she received all her degrees and has taught since 1994.
She specializes in the adaptation of classical texts for the stage. Works that she has adapted and directed include The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, The White Snake, Argonautika, Candide, Mirror of the Invisible World, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, The Odyssey, Arabian Nights, Journey to the West, The Secret in the Wings, Eleven Rooms of Proust, and a new opera with Philip Glass called Galileo Galilei. These productions, primarily produced by Lookingglass Theater and The Goodman Theater of Chicago, have been seen around the country at Circle in the Square on Broadway, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Manhattan Theater Company, Second Stage, Berkeley Repertory, The McCarter Theater, The Old Globe, Shakespeare Theater Co. of DC, The Huntington, and internationally at The Barbican in London and the Wuzhen Theater Festival in China. Her plays – particularly Metamorphoses, The Secret in the Wings (based on fairy tales) and The Odyssey – are produced over 100 times each year around the world in universities, high schools and other amateur and professional venues. She has directed twice for the New York Shakespeare Theater in Central Park, and for the Metropolitan Opera she has directed Lucia di Lammermoor (also at La Scala, Milan), Armida, La Sonnambula, Rusalka, Eurydice and Florencia en el Amazonas, all of which havebeen broadcast live worldwide in movie theaters. Her most recent work is The Matchbox Magic Flute, adapted from Mozart. It premiered at The Goodman Theater and has travelled to the Shakespeare Theater Company of DC and Berkeley Repertory Theater. Her plays are available from Northwestern University Press.