Karin Coonrod
Lecturer in religion and literature.
Karin Coonrod has created many productions off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. Most recently: Blackamoor Angel Opera with Carl Hancock Rux, (libretto) and Diedre Murray (music) at Bard College, The Phoenician Women with American Repertory Institute students at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and Laude in Urbis (medieval mystery plays re-imagined for the 21st century with the city-as-stage in Orvieto, Italy). Other credits include Coriolanus and Julius Caesar with Theatre for a New Audience, Othello at Hartford Stage, Pirandello’s Enrico IV at American Repertory Theatre, her own adaptation of Everything That Rises Must Converge (three short stories by Flannery O’Connor) at New York Theatre Workshop, the epic Henry VI at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, where she was artist-in-residence in 1995-96. Ms. Coonrod’s production of King John was cited as best production of 2000 by The New York Observer; her production of Vitrac’s Victor or Children Take Over (which she co-translated with Frederic Maurin) won her Encore’s Outstanding Director Award; and The House of Bernarda Alba (co-translated with Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz) with the Columbia University MFA acting class of 2005, traveled to Bologna Italy and received the PREMIO DAMS foreign entry award. Founding director of critically acclaimed Arden Party (1987-1997) in downtown New York City, Ms. Coonrod produced, directed and designed texts by many classical greats including Shakespeare, Beckett, Wilde, Brecht, Sophocles et al. With Harold Bloom she created the text of The Falstaffiad, a concert reading at American Repertory Theatre in which Bloom played Falstaff. Affiliations include New York Theatre Workshop and Theatre for a New Audience. Ms. Coonrod is a lecturer in directing at the Yale School of Drama and has been guest artist/teacher at Harvard, Columbia, NYU, University of Iowa, Fordham and California Institute of the Arts. Founder of Compagnia de’ Colombari, an international theater company based in Orvieto Italy, Ms. Coonrod and the company are establishing a new tradition of theater at the city’s annual spring Corpus Christi celebration. B.A., Gordon College;
M.A.T., Monmouth College; M.F.A., Columbia University