BIOGRAPHY
Robert Scanlan
Robert Scanlan is Associate of the Department of English Department at Harvard University. He was for many years the Literary Director of the American Repertory Theater, where he headed the Dramaturgy Program for the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. He directs frequently in America and abroad, winning in 1995 the Boston Theatre Award for Outstanding Director. Directing credits include Julius Caesar for the Actors’ Shakespeare Project (Boston); Samson Agonistes, with Claire Bloom and John Neville at the 92nd Street Y in New York; his own stage adaptation of The Inferno of Dante in Robert Pinsky’s translation; an Evening of Beckett and Beckett Trio in the A.R.T. Fall Festival; Oleanna at the Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre; the Polish language premiere of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow at the Stary Theatre in Cracow; the world premiere of Marie Jones’ The Hamster Wheel in Belfast, Northern Ireland; and the Chinese language premiere of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart in the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Scanlan premiered Carol Mack’s In Her Sight at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, and co-directed (with the author) the world premiere of Derek Walcott’s musical, Steel, at the A.R.T. Professor Scanlan writes and lectures frequently about the staging of Beckett’s work and about contemporary American playwriting. He is a past president of the Poet’s Theatre and a member of its board of directors. With the Poets’ Theatre, he has directed many staged readings, including a periodic “Muster of Poets” and the world premiere presentation of Samuel Beckett’s Stirrings Still (with David Warrilow). From 1978 to 1989 Professor Scanlan was Director of the Drama Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.