Fall Term Guest Director: TAZEWELL THOMPSON

ABOUT TAZEWELL THOMPSON, Guest Director for "INTIMATE APPAREL"

TAZEWELL THOMPSON, international opera and theatre director, playwright and teacher. Opera productions in Madrid, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Cape Town, Vancouver, San Francisco, Wash. DC, Los Angeles, Detroit, Portland, Norfolk, Columbus, New Orleans, New Jersey, and NYC among others. Since 1988, directed 24 productions at Arena Stage, as resident director including: Caucasian Chalk Circle, M. Butterfly, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Yellowman, Yerma, The Heidi Chronicles, On The Verge, Fences, Playboy of the Western World, Glass Menagerie and more than 75 productions (many world and American premieres) in major theaters across the country. His production of Porgy and Bess was broadcast Live from Lincoln Center and received EMMY nominations for best director and best classical production. 

As a playwright, his multiple award winning play Constant Star has had 14 national productions. His play Mary T. & Lizzy K., commissioned by Arena Stage, is the recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award with productions in DC and Minnesota. He is the author of JUBILEE: Fisk Jubilee Singers; JAM & SPICE: The Music of Kurt Weil and an adaptation of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. He has playwrighting commissions from Lincoln Center Theatre, South Coast Rep, People's Light & Theater Company.

During the 2015-16 season he directed: the newly revised opera Appomattox by Philip Glass & Christopher Hampton, Lost in the Stars by Kurt Weil & Maxwell Anderson, both for Washington National Opera at Kennedy Center; the American premiere of Vivaldi's Cato in Utica for Glimmerglass Festival and Kennedy Center; the world premiere of the opera Blue Viola for UrbanArias; and Ruined for Baltimore's Everyman Theatre. For the 2016-17 season, besides Intimate Apparel for Dartmouth, he will also direct Great Expectations for Everyman Theatre, A Raisin in the Sun for Arena Stage and Handel's opera Xerxes for Glimmerglass.

Teaching and directing  credits at schools include: NYU Grad, Juilliard, Tulane, University of Kansas at Lawrence, Syracuse University and Indiana University at Bloomington. Previously for Dartmouth he directed Big Love (2013).