Who is she?
Anne Kauffman, is a NYC based, kick-butt director.
Why you should know her by now
She’s an OBIE award winner for her direction of The Thugs by Adam Bock at SoHo Rep as well as the go-to director for new plays. She has a long standing relationship with playwrights like Jordan Harrison, Anne Washburn and Jenny Schwartz as well as others. Her production of Harrison’s Maple and Vine, was one of the favorites of The Humana Festival of 2011 which prompted Playwrights Horizons to have her direct an all-new production this past year in New York. She is hired all over at places like A.R.T., Wooly Mammoth, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Vineyard and The Guthrie, just to name a few. She is a professor of Directing at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Studio. She received her MFA in Directing from UCSD.
Why we think she is cool
· She is smart and very selective. She seems to choose the projects that are right for her, rather than what makes sense for her career. That takes a great amount of guts in a world where female directors (hell, all directors) can be seen begging for work. This might be one of the main reasons she’s just so sought-after and successful. That doesn’t mean she only takes “easy” projects that won’t risk failure. She gravitates towards plays that have a lot of questions or problems to solve, often working on new plays and being instrumental in their development. Playwrights seem to love her, due to the fact that if Ms. Kauffman has directed your play she tends to direct many that follow. She’s a collaborator in the truest since of the word, and always serves the play.
· She gets bored. In a The Days of Yore interview she talks about how she started as an actress but would get “bored” in the rehearsal hall. She turned to directing because it forced her to stay active, there’s too much responsibility as a director to let her mind wander. That might be why she only spends a day or two on table work. She gets her actors on their feet and keeps the rehearsal hall fluid and active.
· She surprises. Her collaboration with her designers is risky and always seems surprising. In her 2011 production of Maple and Vine at the 2011 Humana Festival of New American Plays the set moved and shifted in dozens of patterns. The floor would disappear and suddenly a mid-century living room would appear while a modern day bedroom elevators down. In her most recent production, Body Awarenes(currently playing at Philadelphia’s The Wilma Theatre), things appear simpler. She employs a unit set of three different spaces: a college lecture hall, a kitchen, and a bedroom. What is surprising is how she uses it. She establishes rules of space and then breaks them, leaving the audience to wonder about the lines between academia and the bedroom. It’s my belief, that theatre does surprise better than most things and it’s something Ms. Kauffman seems to be damn good at manipulating.
Where you can see her do her thing
Her production of Annie Baker’s Body Awareness opens at The Wilma in Philadelphia this week. Click here for tickets and more information: http://www.wilmatheater.org/production/body-awareness
Where to learn more:
Watch videos about her approach: http://americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/anne_kauffman
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