Anne Bogart to be Presented with Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) Gordon Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement and Distinguished Service in the American Theatre

(New York, March 7, 2024) Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), announces that director and theatre visionary Anne Bogart will receive its 2023 Gordon Davidson Award. Named in honor of the founding artistic director of Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group and one of the visionary leaders of the resident theatre movement, the Gordon Davidson Award recognizes a director or choreographer for lifetime achievement and distinguished service in the national not-for-profit theatre. The award will be presented to Bogart at a ceremony in the Spring.

The selection committee was chaired by Neel Keller, former Associate Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. “We are thrilled to honor Anne Bogart with this year’s Gordon Davidson Award. Like Gordon, Anne has a passionate curiosity and inexhaustible belief in the power and potential of our beloved art form. For over five decades, Anne has been a relentless, joyous researcher, experimenter, provocateur, and practitioner. She has delved deeply into the nature of theatre-making and has shared her discoveries with us through productions, books, a codified system of expressive movement and generous mentorship. From small living rooms to regional theatres to large opera houses and beyond, Anne has made theatre as a way of exploring storytelling, community, collaboration, and education.

“Throughout that journey, Anne has touched the lives and careers of hundreds of theatre makers. Her artistic practice and her altruistic spirit have shown us that one can make a life in the theatre that both expands the art form and enlarges the field. The committee is thrilled to be able to present the 2024 Gordon Davidson Award to Anne Bogart in recognition of her lifetime achievements and in heartfelt thanks for all she has given to the field.”

Anne Bogart said of her selection as awardee, “Gordon Davidson was, and remains, for me, a lighthouse. A lighthouse is something or someone outside of oneself, an example, a point of orientation, a beacon of hope or a guiding light, a focal point symbolizing strength, support and even a safe harbor. In the proximity of these lighthouses, we remember that we are not separate entities. “For this reason, receiving the Gordon Davidson Award is especially meaningful to me.

“Gordon’s passion and his stubbornness, even from 3000 miles away when he was alive and now continuing after his departure from this earthly coil, continue to serve as an example, a model, and a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. I am grateful to tie the knot with him publicly, and to be part of the roster of extraordinary artists who were previously endowed with this award.”

Keller was joined on the selection committee by Sheldon Epps, Artistic Director Emeritus of Pasadena Playhouse; Michael John Garces, Artistic Director Emeritus of Cornerstone Theatre Company; Tom Moore, who was mentored by Davidson and directed shows at the Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theatre; Laura Penn, Executive Director of SDC; Lisa Peterson, Resident Director at the Mark Taper Forum from 1995 to 2005; and Warner Shook, who directed Davidson’s final Taper production. Rachel Davidson, daughter to Gordon Davidson, served as an advisor.

The Gordon Davidson Award has previously been presented to Oskar Eustis (2018), Lisa Peterson (2019), Seret Scott (2020), Emily Mann (2021), and Donald Byrd (2022).

BIOGRAPHIES

Anne Bogart is a theatre and opera director. She was the Co-Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program and is the author of six books: “A Director Prepares,” “The Viewpoints Book,” “And Then, You Act,” “Conversations with Anne,” “What’s the Story” and, most recently, “The Art of Resonance.” She is the recipient of an Obie Lifetime Achievement Award, a Doris Duke Artist Grant, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as four Honorary Doctorate degrees, from Bard College, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Cornish School of the Arts and Skidmore Colleges. Recent theatre works include Existentialism (La Mama and Talking Band), Eastland (Trinity Theater, Dublin), The Beautiful Lady (La Mama),

and Composition as Explanation (Court Theater, Chicago). With SITI, recent productions include A Christmas Carol, Falling and Loving, The Bacchae, The Theater is a Blank Page, Persians, Steel Hammer, A Rite, Cafe Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Freshwater Under Construction; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio Macbeth; Hotel Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room; War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio Play; Alice’s Adventures; Culture of Desire; Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives; August Strindberg’s Miss Julie; and Charles Mee’s Orestes. Operas include Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle (Boston Lyric Opera), Wagner’s Tristan and /solde(the National theater of Croatia), Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Boston Lyric Opera),

Verdi’s Macbeth (Glimmerglass), Bellini’s Norma (Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera), I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Glimmerglass), Bizet’s Carmen (Glimmerglass), three operas by Deborah Drattell, Nicholas and Alexandra (Los Angeles Opera), Marina: A Captive Spirit (American Opera Projects), and Lilith (New York City Opera) and Brecht/Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Opera).

View this announcement on the SDCF website here: https://sdcfoundation.org/2023-gordon­ davidson-awa rd-recipient-anne-bogart/

Gordon Davidson (1933-2016) was the founding artistic director of Los Angeles’s Mark Taper Forum, which he led from 1967 to 2005, as welI as artistic director of the Ahmanson Theatre from 1989 to 2005. In 2004 Davidson produced the inaugural season at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Under his leadership, numerous works were developed or made their premieres in Los Angeles, including Zoot Suit, Angels in America, The Shadow Box, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jelly’s Last Jam, and Children of a Lesser God. The Taper received the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1977, and Davidson received the Tony as Best Director of a Play for Children of a Lesser God in 1980. He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2000. He began his career as a stage manager and briefly served as managing director for the Theatre Group at UCLA.

Founded in 1965, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) celebrates, develops, and supports professional stage directors and choreographers throughout every phase of their careers. SDCF works to build a theatrical community that reflects the cultural, racial, and gender diversity of our nation by creating opportunities for artists of all backgrounds to bring their full, authentic selves to their work as creative leaders in the theatre. SDCF’s goals are to provide opportunities to practice the crafts of directing and choreography; to gather and disseminate craft and career information; to promote the profession to emerging talent; to provide opportunities for exchange of knowledge among directors and choreographers; to increase the awareness of the value of directors’ and choreographers’ work; and to convene around issues affecting theatre artists. sdcfoundation.org.