Broadway 101: 10 Directors Every Broadway History Nerd Should Know

Though the director is now one of the most important people on a production’s creative team, creating and shaping the vision for the entire production, that prominent role is oddly-enough a relatively recent development in the context of theatre history. Until World War II, it was very normal to see someone credited simply with “Staging” in a Broadway Playbill, if there was even a credited director at all. Sometimes the playwright or producer would take on those duties and go uncredited.

These ten theatrical legends helped shape the role of the modern Broadway director into how we view it today, and any Broadway history buff should know their names.

(Editors note: We have not included director-choreographers in this list. We will cover those figures in a future Broadway 101 list.)

Orson Welles
May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/a095dac18e03ab14ce2b2369b468fafd-orson-welles-carl-van-vechten.jpg — Orson Welles Carl Van Vechten

You might know Orson Welles best from his film and radio career; his 1941 film Citizen Kane is often ranked high on lists of the best films ever made and his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast is infamous to this day for fooling people across the country into believing we were truly being invaded by aliens.

But Welles got his start on the stage, and was one of the first to come in with a sweeping vision for the production rather than just an idea of good stage blocking. He worked with the Federal Theatre Project throughout his 20s, directing productions like an all-Black Macbeth in 1936 and the 1937 political musical The Cradle Will Rock. The latter was so controversial that the WPA withdrew its funding a few days before its planned Broadway opening. The show went on, but to avoid union and government restrictions the composer Marc Blitzstein performed his score at a piano on a bare stage while the cast shouted out their lines from the audience. The story became the inspiration behind the 1999 film Cradle Will Rock.

Many consider Caesar his biggest stage success, which opened on Broadway in November of 1937. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Welles used modern costumes and minimal scenery to draw comparisons to current-day Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Harold Clurman
September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/0427ddfae32bf1ed2dafbd41c51e495d-harold-clurman.jpg — Harold Clurman

Over his career, Harold Clurman directed over 20 plays on Broadway, including Bus Stop, Touch of the Poet, Incident at Vichy, and Golden Boy. The Group Theatre, which Clurman co-founded in 1931, became one of the first training grounds for the Stanislavsky acting method, which would become the dominant acting style on Broadway and in Hollywood through the middle of the 20th century.

But it is perhaps through writing that he left his directorial mark on theatre history. He wrote seven books about theatre, covering the history of The Group Theatre in The Fervent Years, his own life in an autobiography, and his views on directing and what theatre should aspire to be in On Directing. He also served as a drama critic for over 30 years, writing for The New Republic and The Nation.

The next time you see a show at the Theatre Row complex in New York City, look for the Clurman Theatre named in his honor.

George Abbott
June 25, 1887 – January 31, 1995

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/11ffc9c86a8cf406f85f445092b499d7-george-abbott.jpg — George Abbott

George Abbott, or “Mister Abbott” as he was known to the people that worked for him, was one of the most prolific directors during the Golden Age of musical comedy on Broadway. His many hits include The Boys from Syracuse, Too Many Girls, Pal Joey, On the Town, Call Me Madam, Wonderful Town, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Once Upon a Mattress, Fiorello!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Flora, the Red Menace. Many of his shows featured major innovations to the genre: the first plot-integrated ballet sequence in On Your Toes, the first American musical based on a Shakespeare play with The Boys from Syracuse, and On the Town’s hybrid musical comedy-symphonic score.

Abbott was an early champion for the importance of a musical’s book, insisting that the story be strong enough to stand alone without the score. In turn, he was a writer as well, contributing books to several of the classic musicals he also directed (including Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game, among others).

Abbott also became one of the most famous “show doctors.” Creative teams working on new musicals would have him come to their out-of-town tryouts to offer a fresh perspective as to how they could fix their production’s problems. Often this would involve substantial restructuring and re-writing, superior skills of the director. Abbott’s career was perhaps the longest in Broadway history. At the age of 96, Abbott became the oldest director to stage a hit on Broadway with a revival of On Your Toes.

Lee Strasberg
November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/e119a540f1fa50144f00f3bd07ed6df3-lee-strasberg.jpg — Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg had a successful career directing on Broadway, but he put those skills to his most lasting impact as an acting teacher. Often thought of as the father of method acting in America, he taught the Stanislavsky method first at the Group Theatre and, most notably, while director of the famed Actors Studio in both New York and Los Angeles. The method involves an improvisatory approach to acting with heavy use of real-life memories to approximate the emotions of the character being played.

His roster of famous acting students include Dustin Hoffman, James Dean, Anne Bancroft, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Julie Harris, Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn, and Paul Newman to name but a few. He also worked with Sidney Lumet, Frank Perry, and Elia Kazan, all who would go on to become stage and film directors and carry on the Stanislavsky method. Though Strasberg didn’t create the method, his acting institutions defined the new acting style on the Broadway stage and in Hollywood definitively from the 1950s through the 1980s and beyond.

Joshua Logan
October 5, 1908 – July 12, 1988

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/15530e3010a1c457177a3a12abe9f763-joshua-logan.jpg — Joshua Logan

Joshua Logan is another influential director from the Golden Age of Broadway, perhaps best remembered for his work on South Pacific, for which he also co-wrote the book (with Oscar Hammerstein II) and received a Pulitzer. His staging of South Pacific was groundbreaking for 1949 as the first Broadway musical to offer cinematic-style transitions from scene to scene rather than the traditional lowering of a curtain in order to prepare the next scene.

His stage works include Annie Get Your Gun, Picnic, Mister Roberts, and Fanny. He won Tonys for Picnic, South Pacific, and Mister Roberts. Logan also found considerable success in Hollywood, directing film adaptations of Broadway plays. He came out to film Mister Roberts in 1955, which he followed with film versions of Picnic and Bus Stop. He re-created his stage direction for the 1958 film version of South Pacific, and also helmed movie adaptations of Camelot and Paint Your Wagon.

Harold Prince
Born January 30, 1928

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/582b8e4a61d43bc4ef8286a04050d533-hal-prince-2017-04-hr.jpg — Hal Prince Marc J. Franklin

Harold Prince got his start in the theatre working underneath George Abott, first as an assistant stage manager and later as a producer. He had his first hit as a director in 1966 with Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, but the defining work of his career would be the decade of collaborations he had with composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, beginning with Company in 1970.

When it comes to defining moments in musical theatre history: Most people look to Show Boat in 1927 as the first piece of musical theatre to feature a serious plot and songs with story integration and Oklahoma! in 1943 for being the first musical to fully integrate plot, song, and dance. Company, too, earns its place as a milestone moment for successfully breaking classic musical theatre traditions with a non-linear plot that put an overarching concept first, making way for a decade of experimentation and further development of the genre of the concept musical. Prince and Sondheim followed Company with an unprecedented string of artistic hits, including Follies in 1971, A Little Night Music in 1973, Pacific Overtures in 1976, and Sweeney Todd in 1979.

Prince also had major collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, directing the West End and Broadway premieres of Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera a few years later. Phantom of the Opera is, of course, the longest-running musical in Broadway history and the highest-grossing entertainment venture worldwide. With 21 Tony Awards for his work as a director and producer, Prince holds the record for the most Tony Awards received. Prince of Broadway, now playing at Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway, is a retrospective on Prince’s long and legendary career.

Vinnette Carroll found success early in her career as an actor on Broadway, London, television, and film. Her most lasting impact, however, was as a director, and most notably as an African-American female director. She was an integral part of the creation of the gospel song-play theatre form. When Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope opened in 1972, she became the first-ever African American woman to direct on Broadway. It was a big success, running for over two years and 1,065 performances. Carroll followed up with Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, another success that famously offered Jennifer Holliday her Broadway debut when it was revived in 1980.

After moving to Florida in the 1980s, Carroll continued her work as artistic director and producer of the Vinnette Carroll Repertory Company, where she remained active until he retirement in 2001.

Trevor Nunn made a name for himself working in London. He became artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1968, where he had major successes with his productions of Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth. He came to New York in 1981 with the Broadway transfer of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With two parts—each over four hours in length—Nicholas Nickleby was a true theatre epic and a huge success. Nunn won his first Tony Award for it in 1982.

Though Broadway had received some West End transfers over the years—notably Oliver! in 1963, Half a Sixpence in 1964, and Evita in 1979—Nicholas Nickleby signaled a period of British domination on Broadway, and Trevor Nunn was at the helm for much of it. Nunn directed Cats, which opened on Broadway in 1982 and became one of the longest-running musicals in history, Starlight Express and Les Misérables in 1987, Chess in 1988, Aspects of Love in 1990, and Sunset Boulevard in 1994. Even as the British invasion on Broadway subsided, Nunn continued to direct on Broadway, helming productions of Oklahoma! in 2002, The Woman in White in 2005, A Little Night Music in 2009, and the currently-running revival of Cats, which opened in 2016.

Though George C. Wolfe started his career primarily as a playwright, he would also occasionally direct his own work, including his Off-Broadway play Spunk, for which he won a 1989 Obie Award as Best Director. He made his Broadway debut as the book writer and director of Jelly’s Last Jam, a musical that told the life story of famous black musician Jelly Roll Morton. The show was a success, receiving 11 Tony nominations in 1992. Wolfe was recognized for both his direction and book. Just one year later, Wolfe returned to Broadway directing Tony Kushner’s two-part epic play Angels in America, the first half of which would go on to win the Pulitzer and Wolfe his first Tony Award.

While serving as artistic director of The Public Theater from 1993 to 2004, Wolfe developed the tap musical Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, working with now Tony-winning choreographer Savion Glover, who had performed in the cast of Jelly’s Last Jam. He won another Tony for his direction of the hit show. He continued directing a string of artistically and financially successful plays and musicals on Broadway, including The Wild Party, Topdog/Underdog, Caroline, or Change, The Normal Heart, and 2016’s Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.

Wolfe has more recently moved into directing for television and film, including Nights of Rodanthe in 2008, and 2017’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Julie Taymor famously began her career studying puppetry in Japan, along with experimental theatre. In the mid-1980s, Taymor started working with Theatre for a New Audience, helming productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, but she made her biggest mark on Broadway in 1997 with her production of The Lion King.

Taymor contributed direction, mask and puppet design, and costume design to this daring adaptation of the Disney animated film, which took a decidedly theatrical look at the characters and stories. Taymor chose not to interpret the characters and settings from the film literally, but employed a variety of visual storytelling methods, most notably her use of puppets that leave the operator in full-view of the audience. The decision, though risky, paid off. The Lion King is still running today—about to celebrate its 20th Broadway anniversary—and is frequently among the top-earning shows in the weekly Broadway grosses. The show also made Taymor the first woman to win a Tony Award for best director of a musical.

Taymor will be back on Broadway this season, helming a new production of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly opening at the Cort Theatre this fall.

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