Stanford University, Oxford University (St. Anne's College)
Occupation(s)
Director, Playwright, Educator, Author
Spouse
Anthony Giles
Children
Alexandra Perloff-Giles, Nicholas Perloff-Giles (music producer, DJ "Wingtip")
Parent(s)
Marjorie Perloff (professor and poetry critic) and Joseph Perloff (physician)
Carey Elizabeth Perloff (born February 9, 1959) is an American theater director, playwright, author, and educator. She was the artistic director of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco from 1992 to June 2018.
Perloff was born in Washington, D.C., to Marjorie Perloff, a professor and poetry critic, and Joseph K. Perloff, a professor of medicine and pediatrics and cardiologist. She attended Stanford University, where she received a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, in classics and comparative literature. After graduating from Stanford in 1980, Perloff attended St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, as a Fulbright Fellow and spent two summers directing at the Edinburgh Festival, where she met her husband, attorney Anthony Giles.[1] She makes her home in San Francisco and is the mother of two children, Alexandra Perloff-Giles and Nicholas Perloff-Giles, also known as the producer and songwriter "Wingtip."[2]
Professional career
Perloff worked as an administrator at the International Theater Institute, then as a casting assistant with Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, while launching her directing career off-off Broadway. In 1986, she was named artistic director of the Off-Broadway Classic Stage Company (CSC), where she worked until becoming the artistic director of A.C.T. in 1992.[3]
At CSC, Perloff directed the world premiere of Ezra Pound’s Elektra, the American premiere of Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language, and many classic works. Under her leadership, CSC won numerous OBIE Awards, including the 1988 OBIE for artistic excellence. She served on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for seven years.[4]
In 1993, Perloff directed the world premiere of Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s opera The Cave at the Vienna Festival and Brooklyn Academy of Music. She has also directed a new Elektra, adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker, for the Getty Villa in Los Angeles in 2010.[5]
American Conservatory Theater
In 1992, Perloff was appointed artistic director of A.C.T.,[6] where her first task was to raise $31 million to rebuild the earthquake-damaged Geary Theater (now the American Conservatory Theater), which reopened in January 1996 with Perloff's production of The Tempest, starring David Strathairn. Perloff's tenure at A.C.T. included the creation of a new core company of actors; revitalization of the acclaimed A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program; receipt of the 1996 Jujamcyn Theaters Award, honoring A.C.T.’s efforts to develop creative talent for the theater; a series of international collaborations, including The Virtual Stage and Electric Company Theatre's multi-media adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit,[7]Robert Wilson and Tom Waits' The Black Rider, Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling's The Overcoat, and Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter; and the American premieres of plays by Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter.
In June 2018, after the A.C.T. 2017-2018 season concluded, Perloff left A.C.T. to pursue her freelance directing and writing career.[8]Pam MacKinnon will become the next artistic director of A.C.T.[9]
The Strand
In addition to her work at the main A.C.T. theater on Geary Street (and formerly known as "The Geary Theater"), Carey Perloff raised 30 million dollars to reinvigorate a theater on Market Street that had been built in 1917 and had many lives, including prior to being shut down as a porn theater.[10] The plan of recreating the Strand was complementary to the A.C.T. mission, in that it could accommodate different types and sizes of plays and performances with greater flexibility than the large theater with its over 1,000 seats.[11]
Plays
Perloff has written several plays that have achieved international acclaim. Perloff’s play The Colossus of Rhodes, which premiered at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, CT, in 2001,[12] was a Susan Smith Blackburn Award finalist.
Her play Luminescence Dating premiered in New York at The Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2005; it was coproduced by A.C.T. and Magic Theatre.[13] Her play Waiting for the Flood has received workshops at A.C.T. (2006),[14] New York Stage and Film, and Roundabout Theatre Company.
Her one-act The Morning After was a finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Perloff’s play, Higher, was developed at New York Stage and Film and was presented at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum in November 2010.
Her play Kinship was translated into French and performed in Paris in 2014, with Isabelle Adjani, making her return to the theater after a long absence, in the starring role.[15] In a later rendition in 2015, at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Cynthia Nixon starred in Kinship.[16]
Perloff wrote Bastiano or The Art of Rivalry during a residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in 2019, and Edgardo or White Fire as a commission from the WIlliamstown Theater Festival in 2020.
Honors
Perloff is a recipient of France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the National Corporate Theatre Fund's 2007 Artistic Achievement Award. In 2011 Perloff won the Blanche and Irving Laurie Theater Visions Award for her play Higher.[17]
In 2019, Perloff was awarded the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Dramatic Production, Direction, Lighting and Scenic Design for the Old Globe's production of "A Thousand Splendid Suns."[18] Perloff commissioned the adaptation of this work, written by Khaled Hosseini, for her 25th season as A.C.T. director and it received critical acclaim both during its initial run in San Francisco, and in subsequent runs in Seattle and San Diego.[19]
Writing
Carey Perloff has written several books focused on discussion or analysis of specific plays. Her book on her experience as a theater director and the challenges of raising a family with the "challenges confronting the American theater," Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater, was published by City Lights in 2015.[20] The book was critically acclaimed, with reviews by Tom Stoppard, Khaled Hosseini, and Armistead Maupin. Martin David's review in the New York Journal of Books praised Perloff's contribution to San Francisco's theater scene, which was chronicled through the book in her anecdotes of building A.C.T. after the 1989 earthquake reduced it to rubble. David stated that "Carey Perloff’s leadership of American Conservatory Theater is one of the reasons San Francisco remains a respected center of the art form in our country.[21]
In 2022, Perloff's book Pinter and Stoppard, A Director's View was published by Methuen Drama. In this work, Perloff discusses her decades-long experiences of working closely with these renowned contemporary playwrights, having directed five Pinter plays and eleven Stoppard plays.[22][23]
Related Research Articles
Amy Irving is an American retired actress and singer, who worked in film, stage, and television. Her accolades include an Obie Award, and nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award.
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures such as Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Dos Passos. He has received various accolades including an Independent Spirit Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Volpi Cup, and has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
The American Conservatory Theater (ACT) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school.
Indian Ink is a 1995 play by Tom Stoppard based on his 1991 radio play In the Native State.
JoAnne Akalaitis is an avant-garde American theatre director and writer. She has won five Obie Awards for direction and was a co-founder of the New York theater company Mabou Mines.
The Invention of Love is a 1997 British play by Tom Stoppard portraying the life of poet A. E. Housman, focusing specifically on his personal life and love for a college classmate. The play is written from the viewpoint of Housman, dealing with his memories at the end of his life, and contains many classical allusions. The Invention of Love won both the Evening Standard Award (U.K.) and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (U.S.)
Ray Dooley is a company member at the PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has performed on Broadway, film and television. He is currently the head of the Professional Actor Training Program (PATP) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) and is a drama faculty member.
Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.
Emily Betsy Mann is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020.
Caroline Eugenie Lagerfelt is a French-born American actress, long based in the United States, recognized for her roles on Sweet Magnolias, Gossip Girl, Six Degrees, Dirty Sexy Money, Nash Bridges and Beverly Hills, 90210.
Gretchen Egolf is an American theater, film and television actress.
Annie Baker is an American playwright, film director, and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017. Her debut film Janet Planet released in 2023 to critical acclaim.
Sharon Langston Ott is a director, producer and educator who worked in regional theaters and opera throughout the United States. Two plays she directed, A Fierce Longing and Amlin Gray's How I Got That Story, each won an Obie award after their New York runs.
Les Waters is a British theatre director. Waters was the Artistic Director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has directed plays Off-Broadway and also at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Actors Theatre.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
4000 Miles is a dramatic comedy play by Amy Herzog. The play ran Off-Broadway in 2011, and again in 2012. The play was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Jordan Harrison is an American playwright. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His play Marjorie Prime was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Rachel Chavkin is an American stage director best known for directing the musicals Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown, receiving nominations for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for both and winning for Hadestown in 2019.
Rebecca Taichman is an American theatre director. In 2017, she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Indecent.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
