The New School for Drama Names Joe Mantello Artist-in-Residence

The New School for Drama has announced that the award-winning director Joe Mantello will be the distinguished artist-in-residence for the 2010-2011 academic year. Mantello's directing credits include the wildly popular Wicked, as well as Assassins and Take Me Out, each of which earned him a Tony Award for directing. As an actor, Mantello earned a Tony nomination for his performance in Angels in America, which also starred New School colleague Ron Liebman, who chairs the school's acting program.

"We're excited that Joe will be bringing his incredible talent, critical insight, and elegance to The New School for Drama. His devotion to the theater and professional experience make him a superb mentor and priceless addition not only to the directing department but the entire school," said New School Drama Director Bob LuPone.

Mantello is recognized as a tireless professional with an uncanny amount of energy-likely to serve him well in the kinetic New School for Drama learning environment. "In the nervous world of New York theater, Joe has come to be identified as one of few go-to guys who can reliably make the best case for a show. Slight but commanding, proud but dissatisfied, he is admired as much for his confidence as for his artistry...," Jessie Green of the New York Times wrote several years ago when Assassins was in rehearsal.
Mantello is the fifth artist-in-residence at the school. This residency provides students the opportunity to work with luminaries in the fields of playwriting, directing, and acting. Past New School artists-in-residence include Jon Robin Baitz, John Turturro, Doug Hughes, and John Patrick Shanley.

"I am looking forward to working with these gifted students and becoming a part of the New School faculty for this coming year. As is often the case with teaching talented people, the teacher gains as much insight or possibly more than the student." said Mantello.
As artist-in-residence, Mantello will teach a year-long course on directing and will address the school in a town hall meeting where he will speak of his directing experiences and answer questions.

Mantello's experience in directing includes Pal Joey, 9 To 5, November, The Receptionist, The Ritz, Blackbird, Three Days Of Rain, The Odd Couple, Glengarry Glen Ross (Tony Nomination), Laugh Whore, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune, A Man of No Importance, Design For Living, and Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking for San Francisco Opera. Mantello has also directed The Vagina Monologues, Bash, Another American: Asking And Telling, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony Nomination), Proposals, The Mineola Twins, Corpus Christi, Mizlansky/Zilinsky..., Blue Window, God's Heart, The Santaland Diaries, Snakebit, Three Hotels, and Imagining Brad. He is recipient of Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Clarence Derwent, Obie and Joe A. Callaway awards. A member of Naked Angels, Mantello is an associate artist at Roundabout Theatre Company.

About The New School for Drama
At The New School for Drama, through its interrelated three-year MFA programs in acting, directing, and playwriting, the school is fostering the next generation of dramatic artists. A faculty of working professionals brings to the fore each student's unique and original voice and helps them establish a rooted sense of who they are as individuals and as artists. This includes directing program chair Elinor Renfield, whose production of Johnny Got His Gun won an Obie Award; and Casey Biggs, director of award-winning productions of Hedda Gabler, The Sea Gull, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Three Sisters; playwrights Christopher Shinn, Frank Pugliese, and Michael Weller; playwriting chair Pippin Parker; and acting chair Ron Leibman, Tony Award and Drama Desk Award winner. These faculty members are complimented by film and television actor Robert Walden, who has been nominated for over five Emmy Awards and stage and screen star Karen Ludwig, whose first film was Woody Allen's Manhattan. New School's history in the dramatic arts began in the 1940s, when the Dramatic Workshop, led by founder Erwin Piscator and a faculty including Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, fostered artistic voices as distinctive as Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando. For more information, visit www.drama.newschool.edu.