For the writer Alexander Gelman, see Alexander Isaakovich Gelman

Alexander Isaakovich Gelman

Alexander Isaakovich Gelman , original given name Shunya , is a Bessarabian-born Soviet and Russian playwright, writer, and screenwriter....

.
Alexander Gelman (born December 21, 1960), born: Aleksandr Simonovich Gelman is an American theater director and the current Producing Artistic Director

Artistic director

An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...

 of Organic Theater Company

Organic Theater Company

Organic Theater Company, a Chicago theatre, was founded in the 1970s by artistic director Stuart Gordon. The theater company was incorporated in 1972...

 in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.

Early life

Alexander Gelman was born in Leningrad

Leningrad

Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...

, USSR to Maria Gelman, a musician, and Simon Gelman, a physician. Both of his maternal grandparents worked at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre

Mikhaylovsky Theatre

The Mikhaylovsky Theatre is one of the oldest opera and ballet houses in Russia. It was founded in 1833 and is situated in a historical building on the Arts Square in St. Petersburg...

 and young Alexander (Sasha) literally took his first steps there. In 1973 the family emigrated to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 and in 1976 to the USA. In 1978 he graduated from Charles F. Brush High School

Charles F. Brush High School

Charles F. Brush High School is a public high school in Lyndhurst, Ohio. The school is named for Charles F. Brush, the Ohio-born inventor of the arc light, an invention which, until recently, the school's student newspaper was named after....

 in Lyndhurst, Ohio

Lyndhurst, Ohio

As of the census of 2000, there were 15,279 people, 6,642 households, and 4,397 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,480.1 people per square mile . There were 6,855 housing units at an average density of 1,561.4 per square mile...

.

Training

Gelman received his BFA in theatre from Birmingham-Southern College

Birmingham-Southern College

Birmingham–Southern College is a 4-year, private liberal arts college located three miles northwest of downtown Birmingham. Founded in 1856, it is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Approximately 1400 students from 30 states and 23 foreign countries attend the college...

 (1982) and his MFA in Directing from Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

 (1985) He also spends a month at the University of Illinois at a Directing Colloquium conducted by Edwin Sherin

Edwin Sherin

Edwin Sherin is an American theatre and television director and producer. He is the husband of actress Jane Alexander. He has directed many episodes of the television drama Law & Order, as well as directing for the stage, mainly on Broadway, including The Great White Hope.-Biography:Born in...

, Arvin Brown

Arvin Brown

Arvin Brown is an American theatre and television director and was the Artistic Director of the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut for 30 years. He was married to actress Joyce Ebert until her death in 1997....

, John Reich, Garland Wright

Garland Wright

Garland "Gar" P. Wright is a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and deputy chief, Navy Reserve. He is a 1977 graduate of the United States Naval Academy where he was co-captain of Navy’s first National Championship Sailing team and named an intercollegiate “All American."-Military career:After...

, Clifford Williams, Vinnette Carroll, and Gerald Freedman

Gerald Freedman

Gerald Freedman is an American theatre director, librettist, and lyricist, and a college dean.Born in Lorain, Ohio, Freedman was educated at Northwestern University, where he received both BA and MA degrees. He began his career as assistant director of such projects as Bells Are Ringing, West Side...

.

Career

After moving to New York City in 1985, Gelman began to work as translator and director, after a period of working for NYANA, a refugee resettlement agency (his co-workers there included painter Roman Turovsky, film director Todd Solondz

Todd Solondz

Todd Solondz is an American independent film screenwriter and director known for his style of dark, thought-provoking, socially conscious satire. Solondz has been critically acclaimed for his examination of the "dark underbelly of middle class American suburbia", a reflection of his own background...

 and novelist Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.-Life:...

).

One of his early directing engagements was Carmen

Carmen

Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

at Chattanooga Symphony and Opera

Chattanooga Symphony and Opera

The Chattanooga Symphony and Opera is a combined symphony orchestra and opera company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the only such combined organization in the United States.-Chattanooga Symphony:...

, which was his first collaboration with Vakhtang Jordania

Vakhtang Jordania

Vakhtang Jordania was a Georgian conductor.-Biography:Born in the Republic of Georgia on Dec. 9, 1943, Maestro Jordania studied piano from the age of five. After graduating from the Tbilisi Conservatory, he studied symphonic and operatic conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory, graduating with...

. At this time, he also began his work as assistant and interpreter to Russian directors working in the US. The first one was Yuri Lyubimov

Yuri Lyubimov

Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov is a Soviet and Russian stage actor and director associated with the internationally-renowned Taganka Theatre which he founded ,...

 at Arena Stage

Arena Stage

Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest Washington, D.C. Its declared mission"is to produce huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit. Arena has broad shoulders and a capacity to produce anything from vast epics...

, on a production of Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. This is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his...

. The two later worked on Master and Margarita at American Repertory Theatre

American Repertory Theatre

The American Repertory Theater is a professional not-for-profit theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts...

 in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 and Lulu

Lulu (opera)

Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

at the Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...

. He also directed the film Infinity

Infinity (film)

Infinity is a 1996 American biographical drama film about the early life of physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman was played by Matthew Broderick, who also directed and produced the film. Broderick's mother, Patricia Broderick, wrote the screenplay, which was based on the books Surely You're Joking, Mr...

, starring Megan Blake

Megan Blake

Megan Blake is a pet lifestyle expert and an actress based in Malibu, CA. She is also Miss Georgia 1983.-Career:Blake is a pet expert on, hosts, segment produces and writes for Animal Attractions Television, the #1 Pet Series on PBS and winner of two Tellys and an Honorable Mention at the Genesis...

.

After a number of years freelancing as director and translator, he accepted a position of Head of Directing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1991), where he stayed until 1994. At that time he moved to Salt Lake City, where he took over the directing program at the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

. This began a long and fruitful relationship with Utah Opera and Anne Ewers, its General Director. Among the productions there, he directed Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin (opera)

Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....

, L'incoronazione di Poppea

L'incoronazione di Poppea

L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...

, The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw (opera)

The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...

and many others. During this time he also directed in New Zealand at Canterbury Opera, where he collaborated with Dame Malvina Major

Malvina Major

Dame Malvina Lorraine Major, GNZM, DBE is a New Zealand opera singer. She was born in Hamilton, New Zealand into a large musical family. As a child she performed at various concerts, singing mainly country and western pop and music from the shows. She received her first classical training in 1955,...

. Gelman had additional engagements at Idaho Opera, Ashland-Highland Music Festival and others.

In 2001 he was appointed Director of the School of Theatre and Dance at Northern Illinois University

Northern Illinois University

Northern Illinois University is a state university and research institution located in DeKalb, Illinois, with satellite centers in Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Rockford, and Oregon. It was originally founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895 by Illinois Governor John P...

. In 2006 he became Producing Artistic Director of the Organic Theater Company

Organic Theater Company

Organic Theater Company, a Chicago theatre, was founded in the 1970s by artistic director Stuart Gordon. The theater company was incorporated in 1972...

 of Chicago. At the Organic, he has directed his own adaptations of The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, Bartleby the Scrivener

Bartleby the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by the American novelist Herman Melville . It first appeared anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 editions of Putnam's Magazine, and was reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in...

by Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

, and Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

's The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals largely with the life of Mr. Verloc and his job as a spy. The Secret Agent is also notable as it is one of Conrad's later political novels, which move away from his typical...

. He also directed Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

's Man with Bags, Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...

's Play Strindberg, and Shimizu Kunio's The Dressing Room.