Name Frank Galati Role Writer | Books The Grapes of Wrath | |
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Born November 29, 1943 (age 80) ( 1943-11-29 ) Highland Park, Illinois Occupation Theatre director, actor, professor Movies The Accidental Tourist, The Party Animal Awards Tony Award for Best Play Nominations Academy Award for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay Similar People Stephen Flaherty, Francis Guinan, Terry Kinney, Lawrence Kasdan, Lynn Ahrens | ||
Education Northwestern University | ||
Frank Galati on Haruki Murakami
Frank Galati (born November 29, 1943) is an American director, writer and actor. He was a member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and an associate director at Goodman Theatre. He taught at Northwestern University for many years.
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Early life
Galati attended Western Illinois University (Macomb, Illinois) for one year and transferred to Northwestern University, receiving a B.S. in speech, with a concentration in interpretation in 1965. He taught at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida) and then earned a M.S. in speech from Northwestern in 1966, and received his Ph.D. in interpretation from Northwestern in 1971. During this time, he both directed and performed in many plays.
Career
Galati was an associate director at the Goodman Theatre from 1986 to 2008.
In 2004, Galati was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of nine Joseph Jefferson Awards for his contributions to Chicago theatre.
Galati and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan adapted the novel The Accidental Tourist for a film, The Accidental Tourist which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The pair won a USC Scripter Award for the screenplay.
Galati was awarded the Tony Award for Best Play for his adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath in 1990. The production originated at Steppenwolf and transferred to Broadway where, in addition to Best Play, Galati won an additional Tony for Best Direction of a Play. The drama also received six more nominations, including recognition in acting categories for Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney, and Lois Smith. Since his success with The Grapes of Wrath, Galati has gone on to adapt As I Lay Dying in 1995, and Haruki Murakami's After the Quake in 2005. He has also written original work, such as Everyman (1995). Most of his work debuts at Steppenwolf.
Galati occasionally appears as an actor, and has directed Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop. For Broadway, he directed the musical Ragtime in 1998 and The Pirate Queen in 2007. He has directed two productions of The Visit, at the Goodman Theatre in 2001 and at the Signature Theatre (Arlington, Virginia) in May 2008, with Chita Rivera.
The Frank Galati Papers are at Northwestern University. He is a professor emeritus in the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, having retired in 2006.