Karin Coonrod

Karin Coonrod is an American theater director and writer who teaches at Yale School of Drama.^[1] Coonrod is known for her modern adaptations of classic plays by William Shakespeare and other playwrights. She often chooses to direct plays produced from unusual sources such as lesser-known works by notable playwrights, adaptations from non-dramatic sources, and the writings of notable figures in history.

Early life

Born to an Italian mother from Florence and an American father from Indianapolis, Coonrod grew up living between her parents' native homes in Europe and the Midwestern United States.^[2] She earned her undergraduate degree in English from Gordon College.^[3]

Career

Coonrod began her career as a teacher at an all-boys Catholic school in Monmouth County, New Jersey where she also ran the school's theater program.^[2][3][4] She later enrolled in a graduate theater program at Columbia University.^[2] While working on her master's degree, in 1987, she founded an experimental Shakespeare theatre company, Arden Party.^[2][5] First based in an old movie theater in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, Arden Party gained wider notoriety when, in 1988, the company moved to the Ohio Theater, then located in SoHo, Manhattan. By 1996, Coonrod had staged more than 20 adaptations of classic plays.^[2]

In the late 1990s, Coonrod began earning critical acclaim for her productions of more obscure works by the English playwright William Shakespeare, such as Henry VI (1996) and King John (2000).^[6] She also directed other uncommon plays by lesser-known European playwrights and adaptations from atypical sources.^[3]

Coonrod founded her second New York-based theater company, Compagnia de' Colombari in 2004^[7]—also made up of a small ensemble cast of actors, musicians, and theatre crew—with whom she produces the majority of her later plays. Her experimental theatrical style sometimes calls for the musicians and stage crew to operate in full view of the audience, serving as part of the ensemble cast. Her plays often break the fourth wall to include the audience.^[3] In her plays, the cast of actors often play multiple roles, as in Henry VI,^[5] or the same role is fractured among several actors, as in Merchant of Venice and texts&beheadings/ElizabethR.^[1][8]

Coonrod describes her trade as ''staging sculpture'' because it combines two of her artistic interests—visual depiction and the narrative form.^[2] She frequently uses unusual seating structures like in the 2014 production of Tempest where Coonrod placed the stage between two sets of audiences facing each other, reminiscent of the school gymnasiums where she first directed plays with her young Catholic school students. Coonrod also stages her plays in unusual locales and settings that come from the script's themes. There were performances of the Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in the piazza of the play's eponymous city in a neighborhood that once was a Jewish ghetto. Her theater company later reproduced the play at a high-security prison in Padova with "only actors and inmates in a bare room".^[3]

Works

• Roger Vitrac’s Victor Or Children Take Over (Arden Party: American premiere translated with Frederic Maurin, Aaron Etra, Esther Sobel) The Ohio Theater, New York City 1996
• William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, parts 1,2,3 (developed while Artist-in-Residence) The Public Theater, New York City 1996^[2][5]
• Aleksandr Vvedensky’s Christmas at the Ivanovs’ (translated with Julia Listengarten) Classic Stage Company, New York City 1997^[9]
• William Shakespeare’s King John (Theatre for a New Audience) The American Place Theater, New York City 2000^[10]
• Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge (three stories created for the stage verbatim and developed at the University of Iowa, Sundance Theatre Lab and premiered at New York Theatre Workshop, New York City (2001)
• Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV, American Repertory Theater (2001)
• William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Theatre for a New Audience) The Lucille Lortel, New York City 2003
• Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba (translated with Nilo Cruz and choreographed by La Conja) with the MFA students at Columbia Univeristy and at Bologna University, Italy where the production received a Premio Dams (2004)
• William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Theatre for a New Audience) John Jay College, New York City 2005
• William Shakespeare’s Othello Hartford Stage 2005
• Laude in Urbis (medieval mystery plays: Compagnia de’ Colombari) throughout the city of Orvieto, Italy 2004-6
• Euripides’ Phoenician Women (with students from ART/Harvard; Choreographed by La Conja) Moscow Art Theatre February 2007
• Whitman’s More Or Less I Am (Compagnia de’ Colombari ) Grant’s Tomb and other spaces in New York City 2010-12
• William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost The Public Theater (2011)
• Andras Visky’s I Killed My Mother (Theater Y) Victory Gardens in Chicago and La MaMa, New York (2010-12)^[11]
• Chuck Mee’s A Perfect Wedding at the National Hungarian Romanian Theatre of Cluj, Romania 2012
• Andras Visky’s Juliet/Giulia (Compagnia de’ Colombari) Orvieto, Italy 2012
• Gertrude Stein’s the world is round is round is round (Compagnia de’ Colombari) at Arts, Letters, Numbers in Averill Park, New York 2013
• Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo (Compagnia de’ Colombari) at Palazzo Simoncelli, Orvieto, Italy 2014
• William Shakespeare’s Tempest La MaMa Theatre, New York City 2014^[12]
• Karin Coonrod’s texts&beheadings/ElizabethR The Folger Theatre, Washington, D.C.; BAM/Next Wave Festival 2015^[13]
• Shakespeare’s The Merchant in Venice in the Jewish Ghetto of Venice Jul 2016 (to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Ghetto in conjunction with the 400th of Shakespeare’s death)

Personal life

Coonrod is married to Jonathan Geballe.^[3]

References

External links

• Official website