Gideon Lester (born 1972) is a Tony Award-winning artistic director, dramaturg, curator, and creative producer. He is currently Artistic Director of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Senior Curator of the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and a professor at Bard. He has collaborated with a broad range of American and international artists including Romeo Castellucci, Justin Vivian Bond, Krystian Lupa, Peter Sellars, Tania El Khoury, Anna Deavere Smith, and Neil Gaiman. In 2015 he produced Daniel Fish's production of Oklahoma! at the Fisher Center; it subsequently transferred to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2018, and opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square in 2019, where it won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. He frequently collaborates with the choreographer Pam Tanowitz, and commissioned her 2018 performance Four Quartets, based on T. S. Eliot's poems of the same name, with music by Kaija Saariaho, design based on the paintings of Brice Marden, and narration by Kathleen Chalfant. Four Quartets subsequently performed at the Barbican in London.

Lester co-curated the interdisciplinary arts festival "Crossing the Line" from 2013 to 2018. He was Acting Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) from 2007 to 2009[1] and taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, where he created the Arts Collaboration Lab.[2]

Lester was born in London in 1972 and studied English at Oxford University. In 1995, he was awarded a Fulbright grant and Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to study dramaturgy at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. He taught dramaturgy at the American Repertory Theatre and playwriting at Harvard.[3]

He was the A.R.T.'s Associate Artistic Director[4] from 2002 until 2006 and was Resident Dramaturg at the A.R.T. for five years prior. His stage translations include Marivaux's Island of Slaves (directed by Robert Woodruff at the A.R.T. in 2006)[5] and La Dispute, Brecht's Mother Courage,[6] Büchner's Woyzeck,[7] and two texts by the French playwright Michel Vinaver, King and Overboard. His play Amerika or the Disappearance, adapted from Franz Kafka's first novel, was staged at the American Repertory Theatre in 2005, directed by Dominique Serrand.[8] His other adaptations include The Master and Margarita after Bulgakov's novel, staged by Janos Szasz at Bard Fisher Center in 2013; Wings of Desire (A.R.T. and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2006),[9] Anne Frank and Enter the Actress, a one-woman show that he devised for Claire Bloom.

Lester is the son of politician and human rights barrister, Anthony Lester, Baron Lester of Herne Hill QC, and is the brother of Maya Lester KC. [10]

References

  1. ^ "Mission and History of the American Repertory Theatre". American Repertory Theatre. Archived from the original on 26 February 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  2. ^ Columbia School of the Arts Theatre Faculty Archived 2012-08-05 at archive.today
  3. ^ "Gideon Lester". American Repertory Theatre. 9 September 2008. Archived from the original on 30 July 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  4. ^ McKinley, Jesse (24 May 2001). "New Director is to Lead American Repertory". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 September 2008.
  5. ^ Kennedy, Louise (12 May 2006). "A spin on the classics – 1725 French play gets a modern update, in drag". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  6. ^ "'Mother' Lode". The Boston Globe. 16 February 2001. Archived from the original (fee required) on 12 July 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2008.
  7. ^ Siegel, Ed (26 January 1997). "'Woyzeck' crosses the tabloid with the avant-garde". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original (fee required) on 16 July 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2008.
  8. ^ Kennedy, Louise (17 June 2005). "Discovering 'Amerika' – In a new role as playwright, the ART's Gideon Lester finds himself in the shifting identities of a Kafka tale". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  9. ^ Isherwood, Charles (5 December 2006). "Foolishly, an Angel Falls in Love and Rushes In ... and Up". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 September 2008.
  10. ^ Trindle, Jamila (2 May 2014). "Can I Pay You in Rubles?". FP.
Categories