Michael Mayer | |
|---|---|
 Mayer in 2018 | |
| Born | June 27, 1960 [1] Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Education | New York University (MFA) |
| Occupation(s) | Theater director, filmmaker, playwright |
| Years active | 1976-present |
| Spouse | Roger Waltzman |
Michael Mayer (born June 27, 1960) is an American theatre director, filmmaker, and playwright. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2007 for directing Spring Awakening .
Mayer was born in Bethesda, Maryland, to Jewish parents Jerry and Louise Mayer (born 1936). [2] [3] For his bar mitzvah, he asked his parents for a movie camera and received a Super 8 single lens with a zoom. [4] His first film was a dramatization of "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia". [5]
After graduating from Charles W. Woodward High School, he studied at the University of Wisconsin before transferring to study acting at New York University (NYU)'s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned an MFA in Theater in 1983. [6] [7]
Mayer began performing onstage in New York City, performing in plays such as Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day, but by 1990 had turned his efforts to directing, working as a freelancer while also teaching at NYU, the Lincoln Center Theater Institute, and the Juilliard School. He also served as an assistant director for Kushner's Hydriotaphia. [8]
In 2007, Mayer won his first Tony Award for his direction of the musical adaptation of Spring Awakening (2006), which also won the award for Best Musical. He was nominated for the 2002 Tony for his direction of Thoroughly Modern Millie , which he then directed on London's West End. Mayer also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for both Spring Awakening and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Other Broadway credits include The Lion in Winter (1999), the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Side Man (1998; Drama Desk Award). He directed the 1998 Tony Award-winning revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge starring Anthony LaPaglia and Brittany Murphy, for which he was nominated for a Tony and won a Drama Desk Award. He directed Triumph of Love in 1997, starring Betty Buckley, Susan Egan, and F. Murray Abraham, with music by Jeffrey Stock and lyrics by Susan Bikenhead.
Mayer directed and co-wrote the book for the Green Day-inspired musical American Idiot (which premiered in 2009 at Berkeley Rep and transferred to Broadway in 2010), based on the band's album of the same name. He directed and "re-conceived" the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever starring Harry Connick Jr. He directed the first Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch , which opened in 2014.
Mayer's off-Broadway directing credits include Little Shop of Horrors, The Credeaux Canvas, John C. Russell's Stupid Kids , Peter Hedges' Baby Anger, Theresa Rebeck's View of the Dome, and the New York premiere of Janusz Głowacki's Antigone in New York.
After directing on- and off-Broadway for more than 15 years, Mayer made his feature-film directorial debut with A Home at the End of the World , starring Colin Farrell and Robin Wright Penn, in 2004. He went on to make the family film Flicka (2006), an adaptation of the story My Friend Flicka , which became a hit in DVD market. In 2013 and 2014 he directed select episodes of Amazon's Alpha House starring John Goodman. In 2015, he directed a new film adaptation of The Seagull , starring Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, and Saoirse Ronan.
He directed the pilot and three subsequent episodes of NBC's TV series Smash , which were broadcast starting in February 2012. [9]
He should not be confused with the identically spelled Michael Mayer, who directed a film titled Graduation (2007). [10]
Mayer made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2012 with Rigoletto ; he reset the scene from 16th-century Mantua to 1960s Las Vegas. He was the director of the premiere of Nico Muhly's Marnie for the English National Opera in 2017, which was later performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 2018. He also directed a new production of Verdi's La traviata for the Metropolitan Opera in December 2018.
Mayer is openly gay. He lives with his partner, oncologist Roger Waltzmann, in Chelsea, Manhattan. [11] He is close friends with playwright Tony Kushner, whom he met while studying at NYU. [12]
Broadway
Off-Broadway
West End
National tour
Opera
Film
| Year | Award | Category | Work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Tony Award | Best Direction of a Musical | You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown | Nominated | |
| 2002 | Thoroughly Modern Millie | Nominated | |||
| 2007 | Spring Awakening | Won | |||
| 2014 | Hedwig and the Angry Inch | Nominated | |||
| 2021 | Grammy Awards | Best Musical Theater Album | Little Shop of Horrors | Nominated | [13] |
| 2022 | Drama League Award | Best Direction of a Musical | Funny Girl | Nominated |
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage, he is most known for his seminal work Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few playwrights in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with album musicals, concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some album musicals and concept albums become rock musicals. Notable examples of rock musicals include Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, Grease, and Hair. The Who's Tommy and other rock operas are sometimes presented on stage as a musical.
Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice, in 2002 for her role as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and in 2011 for her performance as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, a role which she reprised in 2021 for a production in London and for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Grease, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, The Music Man, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Once Upon a Mattress. On television, Foster played the lead role in the short-lived ABC Family comedy-drama Bunheads from 2012 to 2013. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.
Gavin James Creel is an American actor, singer, and songwriter best known for his work in musical theater. Creel made his Broadway debut in 2002 in the leading role of Jimmy in Thoroughly Modern Millie before starring as Claude in the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair, both Tony Award-nominated performances. From 2012 to 2015, he starred as Elder Price in The Book of Mormon; he received a Laurence Olivier Award for originating the role in the West End version of the musical and has played the role in the US National Tour and on Broadway. In 2017, he received a Tony Award for his performance as Cornelius Hackl in Broadway's Hello, Dolly!.
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.
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.
Michael Jerrod Moore, known professionally as Michael Arden, is an American actor, singer, musician, and theatre director. Arden won a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2023 for the revival of the musical Parade.
Dick Scanlan is an American writer, director, and actor.
Ken Davenport is a two-time Tony Award-winning theatre producer, blogger, and writer. He is best known for his production work on Broadway.
Thoroughly Modern Millie is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by Dick Scanlan, and a book by Richard Morris and Scanlan. It is based on the 1967 film of the same name, which itself was based on the British musical Chrysanthemum, which opened in London in 1956. Thoroughly Modern Millie tells the story of a small-town girl, Millie Dillmount, who comes to New York City to marry for money instead of love – a thoroughly modern aim in 1922, when women were just entering the workforce. Millie soon begins to take delight in the flapper lifestyle, but problems arise when she checks into a hotel owned by the leader of a white slavery ring in China. The style of the musical is comic pastiche. Like the film on which it is based, it interpolates new tunes with some previously written songs.
Jack O'Brien is an American director, producer, writer and lyricist. He served as the Artistic Director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California from 1981 through the end of 2007.
Rob Ashford is an American stage director and choreographer. He is a Tony Award, Olivier Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner.
Jonathan Drew Groff is an American actor and singer. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he has received several awards including a Tony Award and a Grammy Award as well as a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.
John Howard Gallagher Jr. is an American actor and musician best known for originating the role of Moritz Stiefel in the 2006 rock musical Spring Awakening, which earned him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He also played Johnny in Green Day's Broadway musical, American Idiot, Lee in the 2011 Broadway production of Jerusalem, and Edmund in the 2016 Broadway revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. He portrayed Jim Harper in Aaron Sorkin's drama series The Newsroom, starred in the HBO mini-series Olive Kitteridge, and played Emmett DeWitt in 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Kevin Adams is an American theatrical lighting designer. He has earned four Tony Awards for lighting design.
Jonathan Bradford Wright is an American actor who is best known for his performance as Hänschen in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Spring Awakening.
Stewart F. Lane is a Broadway producer, director, playwright and former actor. He has also written books, including Let's Put on a Show! and Jews of Broadway. He has also produced in Dublin. In addition to publishing two plays, he has directed across the country, working with Stephen Baldwin, Shannen Doherty, Chazz Palminteri, and more. He is co-owner of the Palace Theatre (Broadway) with the Nederlander Organization and a partner in the Tribeca Grill with Robert De Niro, Sean Penn and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He has written three books: Let's Put on a Show!, Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers, and Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way.
Susan Hilferty is an American costume designer for theatre, opera, and film.
Martin Pakledinaz was an American costume designer for stage and film.
Christine Jones is an American multidisciplinary artist for theater, opera, public art, and digital media. Beyond her Broadway, Off-Broadway, and West End Scenic Design, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, American Idiot, and Spring Awakening, Jones is invested in inclusive public art and the wide reach of the digital realm. Her initiative Theatre for One, a mobile performance space designed for a single audience member and actor in collaboration with LOT-EK Architects, has held residencies at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Arts Brookfield, Cork Midsummer Festival, the Times Square Alliance for Public Art, and universities across the globe. Theatre for One’s accompanying digital platform, co-created with Jenny Koons, and designed by OpenEndedGroup, was launched during the pandemic.
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