Emily Mann Biography

Multi-award-winning Director and Playwright Emily Mann is in her 22nd season as Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre. Under Ms. Mann's leadership, McCarter was honored with the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater. McCarter directing credits include Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics with Jimmy Smits (also on Broadway); the world premiere of Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon with Kristine Nielsen (also off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons); Uncle Vanya with Amanda Plummer (also adapted); All Over with Rosemary Harris and Michael Learned (also off-Broadway at The Roundabout; 2003 Obie Award for Directing); The Cherry Orchard with Jane Alexander, John Glover, and Avery Brooks (also adapted); Three Sisters with Frances McDormand, Linda Hunt, and Mary Stuart Masterson; A Doll House with Cynthia Nixon; The Glass Menagerie with Shirley Knight; A Seagull in the Hamptons (an adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull) with Brian Murray and Maria Tucci; and Mrs. Warren's Profession with Suzanne Bertish. Her plays include Execution of Justice (supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship; winner of Helen Hayes and Joseph Jefferson awards; nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Circle awards); Still Life (six Obie Awards); Greensboro (A Requiem); and Annulla, An Autobiography. Ms. Mann wrote and directed Having Our Say, adapted from the book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth (nominated for Tonys in writing and direction, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards; winner of NAACP and Joseph Jefferson awards). For the Having Our Say screenplay, Ms. Mann won Peabody and Christopher Awards. A winner of the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the Edward Albee Last Frontier Directing Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its council. A collection of her plays, Testimonies: Four Plays, has been published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc. Her latest play, Mrs. Packard, was the recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award and was published by TCG in spring 2009. Most recently, Ms. Mann directed the world premieres of The Convert by Danai Gurira, Phaedra Backwards by Marina Carr, Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I (at McCarter and Playwrights Horizons), and Sarah Treem's The How and the Why. This spring, Emily is scheduled to direct The Convert at Goodman Theatre in Chicago and CTG in Los Angeles. Emily's adaptation of The House of Bernard Alba, which premiered at McCarter, was produced at The Almeida Theater in London this past winter. She is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University and was recently named the 2011 Person of the Year from the National Theatre Conference.