SDCF Podcast Series

On November 14, 2010, SDCF hosted their first One-on-One Conversation of the 2010-2011 season at Atlantic Theatre Studios with 2009 Fichandler Award winner   Jonathan Moscone   (Artistic Director, California Shakespeare Theatre) and 2010 Alan Schneider Award winner   Anne Kauffman   (Obie Award,   The Thugs ) and moderated by SDCF Executive Director Laura Penn. The two directors discuss their care...

Stage Direction, Chicago Style: On October 18, 2010, SDCF hosted a sixty-minute discussion on Stage Direction, Chicago Style at Steppenwolf Theatre moderated by   Sheldon Patinkin   and featuring panelists   Seth Bockley ,   Timothy Douglas ,   Gary Griffin ,   Kimberly Senior   and   Dennis Zacek . The panel discusses Chicago's actor-based process, from actor-based companies such as Lookingglass...

2002 Symposium: Directing Revivals: At its 2002 Musical Theatre Symposium, SDCF hosted a panel on directing revivals featuring director/choreographers   Jeff Calhoun   ( Big River   2003 Revival),   Robert Longbottom   ( Flower Drum Song   2002 Revival) and   Susan Schulman   ( Sweeney Todd   1989 Revival) and moderated by Victoria Traube. The panelists discuss how directing revivals is different...

2002 Symposium: Assembling the Team : At its 3-day Musical Theatre Symposium in June of 2002, SDCF hosted a panel on assembling creative teams moderated by Arthur Bartow. Speakers included producers   Marty Bell   ( Ragtime ) and   Sally Campbell Morse ( Urinetown ), choreographers   Larry Fuller   ( Evita ) and   Daniel Pelzig   ( 33 Variations ), Roundabout Artistic Director   Todd Haimes , dire...

2002 Symposium: It's Not Where You Start: In June 2002, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation hosted a panel discussion on how Broadway directors and choreographers got their starts as part of its 3-day Musical Theatre Symposium. The panelists are Susan H. Schulman ,   Jeff Calhoun ,   David Warren ,   Scott Schwartz , Larry Fuller ,   Lynne Taylor-Corbett   and   Gabriel Barre . Some...

The Making of Jelly's Last Jam: In November 1992, SDC Foundation hosted a conversation with the creative team behind Jelly's Last Jam on Broadway: George C. Wolfe (book and direction), Hope Clarke (choreography), Susan Birkenhead (lyrics), Luther Henderson (music arrangement and additional music), Robin Wagman (set design) and Jules Fischer (lighting design) to discuss their creative process. They...

Director Playwright Collaboration : On Tuesday, March 29, 1988, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and New Dramatists hosted a seminar on the director-playwright relationship with directors Tony Giordano , Pamela Berlin , Paul Benedict , and Woodie King, Jr. , and writers Steve Carter , Jack Heifner , John Bishop and Reinaldo Povod . This lively ninety-minute conversation includes discu...

At the SDC Foundation's Choreography Symposium in 1986, choreographers Wayne Cilento   (Tony Award for   The Who's Tommy ),   Graciela Daniele   (8 Tony nominations for Best Choreography),   Janet Watson   ( Ragtime ) and Ted Pappas   ( Paradise   Off-Broadway and the Broadway revival of   Zorba ) spoke with director Marshall Mason about choreography in musical theatre at the time. The panel discu...

A View from the Bridge : On December 15, 1986, director Tony Giordano , designers Hugh Landwehr and Dennis Parichy and actors Michael Fischetti , Jennifer Van Dyck and Diane Martella spoke with moderator Amy Saltz at New Dramatists about their work on a traveling co-production of A View From The Bridge , produced by theatres in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany. Having taken place after two...

In April 2010, Edie Cowan moderated an hour-long roundtable discussion with Broadway choreographers Kathleen Marshall and Jerry Mitchell and dance arrangers David Chase and Mark Hummel . They discuss the role of the dance arranger, who works with the choreographer to take what the composer has written and changes it to fit the choreographer's vision of each dance. Jerry Mitchell talks about choreo...

In February 2010, director Michael Mayer , who won a Tony Award for Spring Awakening and recently directed American Idiot , and choreographer Rob Ashford , who won a Tony for Thoroughly Modern Millie and was nominated for The Wedding Singer , Curtains and Cry-Baby , were featured in a Director/Choreographer Network discussion on Working in Film. Michael Mayer recalls being asked to direct A Home a...

Susan Stroman : In January of 1994, Susan Stroman sat down for an hour-long discussion of her career as a choreographer. She talks about working on Crazy For You , Kiss of the Spider Woman , and Show Boat , noting how bad experiences are necessary to make the good ones what they are. Other topics include working with a cast of 73 actors, working with director Hal Prince, movie musicals and the lac...

In March of 1985, during the original Broadway run of Sondheim's   Sunday in the Park with George , Susan Einhorn interviewed Tony Award-winning librettist and director   James Lapine   about how a director keeps a show in shape. In this seventy-five-minute interview, Lapine discusses replacements, understudies, stage managers and his relationship with the cast after a show opens. He talks about w...

In October of 1984, Hungarian-Canadian director John Hirsch , who directed classical theatre for thirty-two years and served as Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival from 1981-1985, sat down with Richard Harden for a ninety-minute roundtable discussion. He talks about the definition of classical theatre, which he defines as plays which survive the test of time and speak to audien...

In December of 1987, famous avant-garde director   Robert Wilson   sat down for a One-on-One conversation with Tony Award-winning lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. They discuss Wilson's three major influences: the dance work of George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, the first piece of theatre he created with a deaf, mute child, and the poet Christopher Knowles, who once repeated the words "tape...

In 2002, Lincoln Center dramaturg Anne Cattaneo moderated a One-on-One discussion with prolific British theatre, film, television and opera director Richard Eyre . He talks about directing   The Crucible   in the 1970's and in 2002, and how he sees the story as a fable rather than as a metaphor for the McCarthy Era as a result of growing up outside the country. He tells his audience about the impo...

In 2002,   Arthur Penn   sat down for a One-on-One conversation with SDCF Executive Director David Diamond to discuss his triple-threat career in theatre, television and film. He tells the story of his launch into theatre from the army, followed by an early career in TV and the Actors Studio. He talks about his relationship with Bill Gibson which launched two of his biggest successes:   The Miracl...

In June 1995 three-time Tony Award-winning director   Gene Saks   spoke with David Diamond in a One-on-One Interview about his journey through the many aspects of his directing career. Topics of this 90-minute conversation include the challenges of directing comedies and musicals, working with writers, and the differences between directing theatre and film. He talks about the use of spectacle as c...

In this One-on-One conversation with Lincoln Center Dramaturg Anne Cattaneo, Mabou Mines founder and famed director   JoAnne Akalaitis shares her wisdom with a full room gathered at Arts Connection in November, 1995. They discuss her days with Mabou Mines and the experimental theatre of the 60s and 70s, and the desire for a broader audience that motivated her transition to regional theaters, where...

Scott Elliott : At the 2003 SDC Directing Symposium,   Scott Elliott , Artistic Director of The New Group and Callaway Award winner for Excellence in Directing, spoke to a room full of young directors for 90 minutes about his transition from acting in Broadway musicals to becoming an award winning director and artistic director of a successful Off-Broadway theatre company. He describes paying rent...

Vinnette Carroll: In 1999, after receiving SDC's "Mr. Abbott Award," director/ playwright/actress   Vinnette Carroll   spoke with SDC Executive Director David Diamond about her life as the first African American woman to direct on Broadway. She describes her mother's intense desire for her children to be cultured and how she encouraged Carroll to pursue the arts. She speaks about breaking into act...

Andre Bishop: In this Directors Training Symposium from 1996, Lincoln Center Theater's artistic director   Andre Bishop   talks about his responsibilities as an artistic director, the qualities he looks for when hiring a director, his belief that many young directors lack knowledge in certain areas, how theatre as a whole can and must develop the next generation of directors, the key difference be...

Gregory Mosher: In May of 1988, Peter Van Zandt moderated a talk with director and Lincoln Center Theatre artistic director   Gregory Mosher , just weeks after the opening of the Broadway production of David Mamet's   Speed-the-Plow . In a conversation that focuses on Mosher's longstanding relationship with Mamet, and Mosher's leadership of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985, topics include Mosher...

In 1999, SDCF held a panel on Managing Your Career featuring panelists Steve Bolerjack, Leigh Giroux, Noah Kimerling, Brett Singer   and Ross Wisdom   to discuss their various areas of expertise - accounting and taxes, legal issues, and publicity - and how to apply their knowledge to better run the business of your artistic career so that you can grow and develop your professional life. These note...

In May of 1988, esteemed Shakespearean acting teacher Ada Brown Mather discussed the bard's work with three of its contemporary master directors: Zoe Caldwell ,   Gerald Freedman , and   Stuart Vaughn . Mather first introduces us to the work of the panelists, and then she begins a discussion framed by the questions "why do we get so excited about how Shakespeare is directed from age to age?" In th...