Tony Award-Winner Mel Shapiro Dies At Age 89

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report the passing of Tony Award-winning director, Mel Shapiro. Shapiro died on December 23, 2024 at the age of 89.

Shapiro is the winner of two Tony Awards for the 1971 musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, which he directed and co-wrote the book. He directed the 1978 revival of Stop the World - I Want to Get Off with Sammy Davis Jr. as well as John Guare's 1979 play Bosoms and Neglect.

Shapiro's off-Broadway productions include the original staging of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play in 1971. Shapiro staged Václav Havel's The Increased Difficulty of Concentration at Lincoln Center, which won an Obie Award for Best Foreign Play

Shapiro also directed Rachel Owen's The Karl Marx Play for the American Place Theatre. London productions include the musicals Two Gentlemen of Verona and Kings and Clowns.

Shapiro began his professional directing career at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and then as resident director at Arena Stage. Shapiro was co-producing director at the Guthrie Theater and has worked as guest director at the Hartford Stage Company, the Center Theatre Group, the National Playwright's Conference of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He worked alongside Joseph Papp for six years at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater.

As an educator, he was one of the founding members of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and served as the head of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Shapiro was the head of graduate acting for the Theatre Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has taught and directed at the Queensland University of Technology's Theatre School and the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He has served on the boards of the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and the Fund for New American Plays at the Kennedy Center and Theatre of Latin America.

Shapiro was the author of The Director's Companion and An Actor Performs.