Theater Legend Gerald Freedman Has Passed Away at 92

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that stage director Gerald Freedman has died. He was 92. According to The New York Times, his death was due to kidney failure.

Freedman was the dean of the drama school at the University of North Carolina School of Arts for 21 years.

He began his stage work as an assistant to Jerome Robbins in the 1950s, while Robbins directed Gypsy, West Side Story, Bells Are Ringing, and more.

Alongside Joseph Papp and Bernard Gersten, he founded The Public Theater, where he directed many productions of both classic and new works, including the world premiere of HAIR.

In the 1970s, Freedman directed productions by the Acting Company, and from 1966 to 1989 he directed New York City Opera productions.

He also served as artistic director of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland from 1985 to 1997.

Over the course of his six decade career, he directed plays, operas, and musicals on and off Broadway, regionally, and around the world. He won an Obie Award, became the first American to direct at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, and served as Artistic Director of The New York Shakespeare Festival (now known as Shakespeare in the Park), Stratford's American Shakespeare Theater, Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater, and as co-Artistic Director of The Acting Company.

He taught at The Juilliard School, Northwestern University, Yale University, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he served as Dean of the School of Drama for twenty-one years, becoming Dean Emeritus in 2012.

Read more on The New York Times.

Photo Credit: Genevieve Rafter-Keddy