George C. Wolfe
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George C. Wolfe (b. September 23, 1954) is an African-American playwright and director of theater and film. He is openly gay. [1]
Wolfe was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, at the time a heavily-segregated city. As a young child, he attended the all-black private school at which his mother taught, but began attending the integrated Frankfort public school district after a family move. He attended Frankfort High School. There began to pursue his interest in theater, directing and performing in several plays. He also wrote poetry and prose for the high school literary journal
After high school, Wolfe enrolled at the historically-black Kentucky State University, the alma mater of his parents, Costello and Anna Lindsey Wolfe. Following his first year, he transferred to Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he pursued a BA in theater. Wolfe then taught for several years in Los Angeles and later in New York, where he received an MFA in dramatic writing and musical theater at New York University in 1983.
Wolfe's first offerings--the musical Paradise (1985), his play The Colored Museum (1986)--were off-Broadway productions that met with mixed reviews. In 1989, however, Wolfe won an Obie Award for best off-Broadway director for his play Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by Zora Neale Hurston.
Wolfe gained a national reputation with his 1991 musical Jelly's Last Jam, a musical about the life of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton; after a Los Angeles opening, the play moved to Broadway, where it received 11 Tony nominations. Two years later, Wolfe directed Tony Kushner's Angels in America to great critical acclaim as well as a Tony award; he also directed the second half, Perestroika, the following year.
From 1993 to 2004, Wolfe served as artistic director and producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, where, in 1996, he created the musical Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, an ensemble of tap and music starring Savion Glover; the show moved to Broadway's Ambassador Theatre and his work won him a second Tony Award for direction and was an enormous financial success.
In late 2004, Wolfe announced his intention to leave the theater for film direction, beginning with the well-received HBO film Lackawanna Blues.
Despite this move, Wolfe continues to direct plays such as Tony Kushner's Caroline, or Change and Suzan-Lori Parks' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Topdog/Underdog. In the summer of 2006 he directed a new translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Austin Pendleton.
