Nationality American Spouse Daniel Irvine (m. 2011) Role Theater Director | Name Marshall Mason Occupation Director | |
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Born February 24, 1940 (age 84) ( 1940-02-24 ) Amarillo, Texas Books Creating Life on Stage: A Director's Approach to Working with Actors Awards Obie Award for Direction, Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement Nominations Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play Similar People Lanford Wilson, William M Hoffman, John Lee Beatty, Lou Liberatore, Jonathan Hogan | ||
Education Northwestern University | ||
Marshall w mason the hot l baltimore
Marshall W. Mason (born February 24, 1940) is an American theater director, educator and author. He was the founder and for eighteen years, artistic director of the Circle Repertory Company in New York City (1969-1987).
Contents
- Marshall w mason the hot l baltimore
- Marshall w mason meeting lanford wilson
- Work with Lanford Wilson
- Broadway
- Off Broadway
- Productions around the country and overseas
- Television
- Honors
- Teacher author
- Personal life
- Additional directing credits
- References
Born in Amarillo, Texas, Mason graduated in 1961 with a B.S. in theater from Northwestern University, where he directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the age of 19, winning his first award for directing. Upon graduating, he relocated to Manhattan, where he began working in the off-off-Broadway theater scene in such venues as Caffe Cino, the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and Judson Poets Theatre. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1964 with a revival of the Henrik Ibsen play Little Eyolf. His Broadway debut was on February 24, 1976 with Jules Feiffer´s Knock Knock.
Marshall w mason meeting lanford wilson
Work with Lanford Wilson
In 1965 he directed Balm in Gilead, his first collaboration with playwright Lanford Wilson. Since then he directed more than sixty productions of Wilson's plays, which Playbill has identified as the longest collaboration between a playwright and director in the history of the American theater. Among these are The Hot l Baltimore (1973), for which he won his first Obie Award for Distinguished Direction, Fifth of July (1978), Talley's Folly (1979), Angels Fall (1983), Burn This (1987), Redwood Curtain (1992), and Book of Days (2002).
Broadway
Mason has directed twelve productions on Broadway and has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play five times. His first Broadway production was the 1976 play Knock Knock by Jules Feiffer, for which he received his first Tony nomination. Additional Broadway credits include Albert Innaurato's Gemini (1977), Robert Clark and Sam Bobrick's Murder at the Howard Johnson's (1979), Wilsons' Fifth of July (1980), Talley's Folly (1980), Angels Fall (1983), Peter Nichols' Passion (1983), William M. Hoffman's As Is (Drama Desk Award for Best Play, 1985), Wilson's Burn This (1988), Chekhov's The Seagull (1992), Rupert Holmes' Solitary Confinement (1992) and Wilson's Redwood Curtain (1992). From 1983 to 1986, Mason was president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national labor union.
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway Mason was awarded five Obies for Outstanding Direction for The Hot l Baltimore (1973), the New York premiere of Tennessee Williams' Battle of Angels (1974), Wilson's The Mound Builders (1975), Jules Feiffer's Knock Knock (1976), Wilson's Serenading Louie (1976), and a sixth Obie Award for Sustained Achievement (1983). Memorable off-Broadway productions he directed include Edward J. Moore's The Sea Horse (1974), Romulus Linney's Childe Byron (1981), Wilson's Talley & Son (1985), William Mastrosimone's Sunshine (1989), Larry Kramer's The Destiny of Me (1992), Wilson's Sympathetic Magic (1997) and Book of Days (2002).
Productions around the country and overseas
He has worked widely in regional theaters, including the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Arena Stage and Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., the McCarter Theater in Princeton, the Hartford Stage Company, the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, the Cincinnati Playhouse, and the Milwaukee Rep. For one season (1988), he was Guest Artistic Director for the Ahmanson Theater of the Los Angeles Center Theater Group. In addition, he directed three productions in London and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the National Theatre of Japan in Tokyo.
Television
For television, Mason directed William Inge’s Picnic, Lanford Wilson’s The Mound Builders and Fifth of July, and Robert Patrick’s Kennedy's Children. He received two Cable ACE Award nominations for his productions on Showtime.
Honors
On Broadway, Mason was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play five times. Off-Broadway, he received five Obie Awards for Outstanding Direction of a play and a sixth Obie for Sustained Achievement. He is the recipient of the 1979 Theatre World Award, and the 1977 Margo Jones Award for his discovery and nurturing of new playwrights and actors in his work with the Circle Repertory Company. In 1999 he was recognized with a "Mr. Abbott Special Millennium Award" as one of the most innovative and influential directors of the twentieth century. In 2014, he was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame. He received the 2015 Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theater Foundation. In 2016, Mason received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.
Teacher, author
Mason is Professor Emeritus of Theater at Arizona State University, where he taught for ten years, and was honored with ASU’s 2001 Creative Activity Award. From 1994 to 1995 he was the chief drama critic for the Phoenix New Times, a weekly newspaper. He received the 1995 Phoenix Press Club Award for writing about the performing arts. He is the author of the 2007 book Creating Life On Stage: A Director's Approach to Working with Actors, and The Transcendent Years: Circle Repertory Theater and the '60's, published online in 2016.
He is a member of the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center.
Personal life
He divides his time between his homes in Mazatlán and Manhattan. On 25 July 2011, the first Monday after New York State enacted its marriage equality law, Mason married his companion of 37 years and fellow theater artist, Daniel Irvine.