Lesley Schisgall Currier

Lesley Schisgall Currier is the founding Managing Director of Marin Shakespeare Company. She holds a B.A. in Religion from Princeton University, where she was awarded the Frances LeMoyne Page Award for Theatre. She spent three years with the Ukiah Players, where she acted, produced and served as fundraiser coordinator for the Phase II building expansion. In 1988, while in Ukiah, she initiated the New American Comedy Festival. After a season acting at Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she studied at U.C. Irvine's M.F.A. Program in Acting, before being invited to Marin with Robert to found Marin Shakespeare Company. Since 1989, she has produced award-winning summer productions, created education/outreach programs that serve over 4,000 students each year, and provided work for thousands of theatre artists. An actor, director and playwright, Lesley's original adaptation of "A Thousand and One Arabian Nights", which she directed, was nominated for "Best Overall Production of 2002" by the Bay Area Critics Circle. Lesley was nominated as "Best Director 2009" for "Twelfth Night, or All You Need Is Love" which she adapted with Robert Currier. She and Robert co-founded Baja Shakespeare in 2001, brining live theatre to the East Cape of Mexico's southern Baja peninsula. Lesley is the founder of Shakespeare at San Quentin, which gives inmates opportunities to study and perform Shakespeare. She is past President of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, served on Theatre Bay Area's Theatre Service Committee for six years, and has thrice served on grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2007, Lesley was elected to the Marin Women's Hall of Fame.