THE ELEPHANT MAN Director Jack Hofsiss Passes Away at 65

BroadwayWorld has just learned that Broadway director Jack Hofsiss passed away yesterday, September 13. He was 65 years old.

Hofsiss received a Tony Award for his direction of The Elephant Man on Broadway, the youngest director to have ever received it at the time. The production also garnered him a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Obie Award, and New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

Hofsiss grew up in New York City as a Catholic and served as an altar boy, which he claims was his "first experience of theatre." He is a 1971 graduate of Georgetown University. Jack currently teaches directing at HB Studio in NYC.

After a directing stint at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., he became a casting director in New York for several years. He then directed The Best of Families, a mini-series, for television in 1977. He also directed for TV Out of Our Father's House (1978), 3 by Cheever: The Sorrows of Gin (1979), The Elephant Man (1982),"Family Secrets (1984), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1985). In 1982 he directed the film I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can.

In 1985, Hofsiss dived into a pool and suffered a spinal cord injury, resulting in paralysis up to his mid-chest. He spent eight months at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine and uses a wheelchair. Just months after the accident he returned to the theater scene, directing All the Way Home at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Hofsiss appeared in the documentary The Needs of Kim Stanley in 2005. He died at his home in Manhattan on September 13, 2016.