Name Ian Gallanar | ||
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Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's 2015-2016 Season
Ian Gallanar is an American theatre director. He is the founder and current Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.
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Life and career
Gallanar trained at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His early career was mostly as an actor and playwright having performed and written for companies across the United States including New City Theater, The Seattle Theater Project, Repertory Theater of America, North Carolina Theater for Young People,etc. In 1989, he co-founded the Seattle Performance Lab and was its Co-Artistic Director for two seasons. He was the Artistic Director of The National Theatre for Children and led the company through its growth into the nation's most active children's theater from 1993-1998. At NTC, Gallanar wrote and directed productions that reached well over 3 million students across the country. In 1997, Gallanar founded the Minnesota Shakespeare in the Park in Minneapolis.
In 2002, Gallanar founded The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is one of the five largest theaters in Maryland. He has directed a number of productions with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Coriolanus, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysistrata, The Front Page, As You Like It, Cyrano de Bergerac, Twelfth Night and many others. In 2012, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company acquired the Mercantile Trust and Deposit Company building in Downtown Baltimore in order to convert it into a modern Shakespearean playhouse. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Theater opened on September 19, 2014. CSC will expand with the opening of The Studio at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, located next door to the existing theater,in 2017. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is the leading classical theater in the State of Maryland.
Ian Gallanar is a Howie Award Winner (Howard County, Maryland) for Outstanding Artist for lifetime achievement in the arts, a Distinguished Alumni of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Telly Award Winner. a Helen Hayes Tribute Award Winner and a member of the prestigious National Theater Conference. In 2017, he was elected Vice President of the international Shakespeare Theatre Association and will serve in this position through to 2019.