Carey Perloff
Encyclopedia
Carey Elizabeth Perloff (born February 9, 1959) is an American theater director and playwright. She has been the artistic director of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.)
in San Francisco since 1992.
, 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. She makes her home in San Francisco and is the mother of two children, Alexandra (B.A., Harvard University, 2011) and Nicholas.
(CSC), where she worked until taking the helm of A.C.T.
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 also served on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for seven years. 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 most recently directed a new Elektra, adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker, for the Getty Villa in Los Angeles.
and Electric Company Theatre's multi-media adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre
's No Exit
, 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
. Perloff's directorial work for A.C.T. includes: The Tosca Project (co-created with choreographer Val Caniparoli; world premiere), Phèdre
, Boleros for the Disenchanted, Rock 'n' Roll
, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
, The Government Inspector, After the War (world premiere), Travesties
, Happy End
, A Christmas Carol (co-adapted with Paul Walsh; world premiere), The Voysey Inheritance
(adapted by David Mamet; world premiere), The Real Thing
, A Mother
, A Doll's House
, Waiting for Godot
, The Three Sisters, Night and Day
, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (world premiere), Celebration
(world premiere), The Room, Enrico IV
, The Misanthrope
, The Invention of Love
(American premiere), The Threepenny Opera
, Indian Ink (world premiere), Old Times
, Mary Stuart, Singer's Boy (world premiere), The Rose Tattoo
, The Tempest
, Arcadia
, Hecuba
, Home
, Uncle Vanya
, Antigone, Bon Appétit, Creditors
, Hilda, No for an Answer (world premiere), her own play The Colossus of Rhodes, and Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. She also teaches and directs in the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program.
American Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...
in San Francisco since 1992.
Biography
Perloff was born in Washington, D.C., to Marjorie PerloffMarjorie Perloff
Marjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...
, 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. She makes her home in San Francisco and is the mother of two children, Alexandra (B.A., Harvard University, 2011) and Nicholas.
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 CompanyClassic Stage Company
Classic Stage Company, or CSC, is a classical Off-Broadway theater dedicated to reimagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience, presenting plays from the past that speak directly to today's issues. Founded in 1967, Classic Stage Company is one of Off-Broadway's...
(CSC), where she worked until taking the helm of A.C.T.
At CSC, Perloff directed the world premiere of Ezra Pound’s Elektra, the American premiere of Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language
Mountain Language
Mountain Language is a one-act play written by Harold Pinter, first published in The Times Literary Supplement on 7–13 October 1988. It was first performed at the Royal National Theatre in London on 20 October 1988 with Michael Gambon and Miranda Richardson. Subsequently, it was published by...
, and many classic works. Under her leadership, CSC won numerous OBIE Awards, including the 1988 OBIE for artistic excellence. She also served on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for seven years. 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 most recently directed a new Elektra, adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker, for the Getty Villa in Los Angeles.
American Conservatory Theater
In 1992, Perloff was appointed artistic director of A.C.T., 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. has been marked by 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 StageThe Virtual Stage
The Virtual Stage is a professional multimedia theatre company based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 2000 by Artistic Director Andy Thompson, The Virtual Stage focuses on the investigation of emerging technologies in theatre and often utilizes cinematic techniques and...
and Electric Company Theatre's multi-media adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's No Exit
No Exit
No Exit is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The original French title is Huis Clos, the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors; English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out...
, Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
and Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
’ The Black Rider
The Black Rider
The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is a self-billed "musical fable" in the avant-garde tradition created through the collaboration of theatre director Robert Wilson, musician Tom Waits, and writer William S. Burroughs. Wilson was largely responsible for the design and direction....
, Morris Panych
Morris Panych
Stephen Morris Panych is a Canadian playwright, director and actor.Morris Panych was born in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton. He studied at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and the University of British Columbia...
and Wendy Gorling's The Overcoat, and Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter; and the American premieres of plays by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
and Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
. Perloff's directorial work for A.C.T. includes: The Tosca Project (co-created with choreographer Val Caniparoli; world premiere), Phèdre
Phèdre
Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...
, Boleros for the Disenchanted, Rock 'n' Roll
Rock 'n' Roll (play)
Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.-Plot summary:The play is concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the socialist movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of...
, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
'Tis Pity She's a Whore
'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was likely first performed between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins...
, The Government Inspector, After the War (world premiere), Travesties
Travesties
Travesties is a play by Tom Stoppard.The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the...
, Happy End
Happy End (musical)
Happy End is a surrealistic three-act musical comedy by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht which first opened in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on September 2, 1929. It closed after seven performances...
, A Christmas Carol (co-adapted with Paul Walsh; world premiere), The Voysey Inheritance
The Voysey Inheritance
The Voysey Inheritance is a play written by the English dramatist Harley Granville-Barker. Originally written in 1905, it was revived at the National Theatre in 2006.It is currently in the public domain.- See also :*...
(adapted by David Mamet; world premiere), The Real Thing
The Real Thing (play)
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....
, A Mother
A Mother
"A Mother" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.-Plot summary:The story commences with a brief description of Mr. Holohan, who works for an Irish cultural society and has been arranging a series of concerts. Holohan’s bad leg is a prominent feature. We are then...
, A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
, Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
, The Three Sisters, Night and Day
Night and Day (play)
Night and Day is a 1978 play by Tom Stoppard. The sets and costumes were designed by Carl Toms and it ran for two years at the Phoenix Theatre in central London, UK. The lead roles of Richard Wagner and Ruth Carson were created by John Thaw and Diana Rigg, respectively.The play is post-colonial in...
, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (world premiere), Celebration
Celebration (play)
Celebration is a play by British playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London.-Synopsis:...
(world premiere), The Room, Enrico IV
Enrico IV
Henry IV is a play by Luigi Pirandello. A study on madness with comic and tragic sides, it has been translated into English by Tom Stoppard and others...
, The Misanthrope
The Misanthrope
The Misanthrope is the first EP from metal band Darkest Hour. It was released in 1996 on the defunct label Death Truck Records. It is much more hardcore orientated metalcore unlike their later releases.- Track listing :# "Vise" - 5:30...
, The Invention of Love
The Invention of Love
The Invention of Love is a 1997 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 towards the end of his life and contains many...
(American premiere), The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
, Indian Ink (world premiere), Old Times
Old Times
Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall...
, Mary Stuart, Singer's Boy (world premiere), The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...
, The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
, Arcadia
Arcadia (play)
Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge...
, Hecuba
Hecuba (play)
Hecuba is a tragedy by Euripides written c. 424 BC. It takes place after the Trojan War, but before the Greeks have departed Troy . The central figure is Hecuba, wife of King Priam, formerly Queen of the now-fallen city...
, Home
Home (play)
Home is a play by David Storey. It is set in a mental asylum, although this fact is only revealed gradually as the story progresses.The five characters include seemingly benign Harry, highly opinionated Jack, cynical Marjorie, and flirtatious Kathleen...
, Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....
, Antigone, Bon Appétit, Creditors
Creditors (play)
Creditors is a naturalistic tragicomedy by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It was written in Swedish during August and September 1888 in Denmark. It was first published in Danish in February 1889 and appeared in Swedish in 1890. It premièred at the Dagmar Theatre in Copenhagen in March...
, Hilda, No for an Answer (world premiere), her own play The Colossus of Rhodes, and Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. She also teaches and directs in the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program.