Ian Gallanar is an American theatre director. He is the founder and current Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. [1]
Ian Gallanar is an American theatre director. He is the founder and current Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. [1]
Gallanar trained at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His early career was mostly as an actor and playwright having performed and written for companies across the United States including New City Theater, The Seattle Theater Project, Repertory Theater of America, North Carolina Theater for Young People, etc. In 1989, he co-founded the Seattle Performance Lab and was its Co-Artistic Director for two seasons. He was the Artistic Director of The National Theatre for Children and led the company through its growth into the nation's most active children's theater from 1993 to 1998. At NTC, Gallanar wrote and directed productions that reached well over 3 million students across the country. In 1997, Gallanar founded the Minnesota Shakespeare in the Park in Minneapolis.
In 2002, Gallanar founded The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is the largest classical theater in Maryland with annual operating budgets of $3M. He has directed a number of productions with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Coriolanus, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysistrata, The Front Page, As You Like It, Cyrano de Bergerac, Twelfth Night and many others. In 2012, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company acquired the Mercantile Trust and Deposit Company building in Downtown Baltimore in order to convert it into a modern Shakespearean playhouse. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Theater opened on September 19, 2014. In 2017, CSC expanded its operations ever further with the opening of The Studio at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, located next door to the existing theater. The Studio is a classroom, rehearsal and alternative performance space.
In 2023, Gallanar and the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company launched Shakespeare Beyond, a program to bring live performances and arts experiences to neighborhoods in Baltimore and communities across the State of Maryland.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's theater education programming is the largest in the State of Maryland and the organization, as a whole, serves as a model for arts organizations around the country for its sustained growth and strategic development.
Ian Gallanar is a Howie Award Winner (Howard County, Maryland) for Outstanding Artist for lifetime achievement in the arts, a Distinguished Alumni of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Telly Award Winner, a Helen Hayes Tribute Award Winner and a member of the prestigious National Theater Conference. Ian is a Past-President of the international Shakespeare Theatre Association and was a recipient of their 2023 Sandra and Sidney Berger Award given in recognition of lifetime achievements as an Artistic Director.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) is a non-profit, professional theater company located at Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois. Its more than six hundred annual performances performed 48 weeks of the year include its critically acclaimed Shakespeare series, its World's Stage touring productions, and youth education and family oriented programming. The theater had garnered 77 Joseph Jefferson awards and three Laurence Olivier Awards. In 2008, it was the winner of the Regional Theatre Tony Award.
Shakespeare Santa Cruz was an annual professional theatre festival in Santa Cruz, California, which ran from 1981 to 2013. After losing the financial support of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the company was relaunched through crowdfunding as Santa Cruz Shakespeare.
Bartlett B. Sher is an American theatre director. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most original and exciting directors, not only in the American theater but also in the international world of opera". Sher has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific.
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, D.C. The theatre company focuses primarily on plays from the Shakespeare canon, but its seasons include works by other classic playwrights such as Euripides, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Schiller, Coward and Tennessee Williams. The company manages and performs in two spaces: The Michael R. Klein Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall. In cooperation with George Washington University, they run the STC Academy.
The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) is a theatre company based in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 2002, by Ian Gallanar and Heidi Busch-Gallanar, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has grown into one of the twenty largest Shakespeare theaters in the United States under the leadership of Founding Artistic Director Ian Gallanar and Managing Director Lesley Malin. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has performance spaces in Baltimore and Elliott City, Maryland. Its main indoor space, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater opened in 2014 after a $7M renovation of the Mercantile Bank Building, a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition, The Studio, is located next door on the fourth floor of the Merchants Club space and is used for educational programs, rehearsals and as an alternate performance space for CSC. They continue to perform outdoor every summer at the Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City, Maryland.
Michael Kahn 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.
Bill Rauch is an American theatre director. He was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (PACNYC) at the World Trade Center in 2018. The Perelman was the final piece of the plan to revitalize the World Trade Center site and creates work which inspires hope.
The Greater Baltimore Theater Awards are theater awards to recognize excellence in the professional theater in the Greater Baltimore, Maryland (USA) area since 2004.
The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival was a small nonprofit theatre that produced plays by or about Shakespeare in Baltimore, Maryland. It also had an educational program that introduced school children to Shakespeare. The company existed, in different forms, from 1994 to 2010.
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival is a Shakespeare festival in Nashville, Tennessee.
Synetic Theater is a non-profit physical theater company located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It performs at the Crystal City Theatre in Arlington Virginia. Since its formation its productions have received numerous awards.
Classical Theatre Project is a professional theatre company based in Toronto, Ontario that creates innovative productions of classic plays for a new generation of theatre fans. The company was founded in 2001 and focuses on producing the works of William Shakespeare. Since its creation, the CTP has played to more than 500,000 audience members across Canada and the U.S.
The Contemporary Theater Company (CTC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit theater company based in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Founded by Artistic Director Christopher J. Simpson in 2005, the company presents a range of plays throughout South County with an emphasis on reaching first-time theatergoers. The company presents an annual holiday show at the historic waterfront Towers in Narragansett and produces an annual 24-Hour Play Festival at the South Kingstown High School. The company presents theater, classes and public events at a theater at 327 Main Street in historic downtown Wakefield that opened in July 2012.
Bag&Baggage Productions is a professional theatre company based in Hillsboro, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 2005, the non-profit group produces up to five fully staged plays per year and presents a variety of other acts and events. Their home venue is "The Vault", a theater located in a former bank building in downtown Hillsboro, Oregon, on East Main Street.
Shakespeare in the Park is a term for outdoor festivals featuring productions of William Shakespeare's plays. The term originated with the New York Shakespeare Festival in New York City's Central Park, originally created by Joseph Papp. This concept has been adapted by many theatre companies, and over time, this name has expanded to encompass outdoor theatre productions of the playwright's works performed all over the world.
The Hudson Classical Theater Company, formerly known as Hudson Warehouse is known for presenting outdoor theatre, including Shakespeare. They perform three outdoor plays in the summer months in Riverside Park and fall/winter productions at Goddard Riverside's Bernie Wohl Center. Known as "The Other Shakespeare in the Park," the company was founded in 2004 by Nicholas Martin-Smith, who serves as its artistic director. In 2021 it was renamed as Hudson Classical Theater Company.
Simon Godwin is an English theatre director based in Washington, DC, where he is currently serving as artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Previously he was based in London, serving as associate director of London's National Theatre, associate director of the Royal Court Theatre and associate director at Bristol Old Vic.
Daniel Fish is an American theater director based in New York City.
Robert Icke is an English writer and theatre director. He has been referred to as the "great hope of British theatre."