Anna D. Shapiro Biography

Anna D. Shapiro (born 1967) is an American theatre director.

Biography

Early years

Shapiro was born in Evanston, Illinois, and went on to receive an undergraduate degree in directing from Columbia College Chicago. She then attended graduate school at the Yale School of Drama and was the recipient of a 1996 Princess Grace Award. Her Yale classmates from the early '90s jokingly called her "The truck-stop waitress who will one day run American theatre" because she "was the butchest person in the MFA program, which was also very associated with the idea of what theatre in Chicago was--psychological realism" she explains.

Career

Shapiro joined the faculty of Northwestern University as head of the Graduate Directing Program in Theatre in the fall of 2002. She has been affiliated with Steppenwolf Theatre since 1995, serving as the original director of the New Plays Lab and later joining the artistic staff as Resident Director. Shapiro currently serves as an Artistic Associate and she became a member of the ensemble in 2007.

Her recent credits include the world premieres of Until We Find Each Other by Brooke Berman and The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris, the Chicago and Galway productions of Purple Heart, Three Days of Rain, Drawer Boy, I Never Sang for my Father, and Man from Nebraska. She also directed the world premieres of The Ordinary Yearning of Miriam Buddwing by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros at Steppenwolf and Bruce Norris's The Infidel at both Steppenwolf and the Philadelphia Theatre Company.

Other credits include Iron at Manhattan Theatre Club, A Fair Country by Jon Robin Baitz at the Huntington Theatre Company, and Edwin Sanchez's Trafficking in Broken Hearts for the Atlantic Theatre Company.

After directing Tracy Letts' August: Osage County at Steppenwolf and winning the Jefferson Award for Best Director, she took the play to Broadway with all but two of the original cast and won the Tony Award for Best Director of a Play, as well the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Play. August:Osage County was named by Time Magazine as its Number 1 Theater Production for 2007.