Princess Grace Statue Award, 2010

Princess Grace Award
Theater Apprenticeship, 1997
Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Anna D. Shapiro has been affiliated with Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago since 1995, serving as the original director of the New Plays Initiative, later joining the artistic staff as Resident Director, Associate Artist and, since 2005, as an Ensemble member. She directed Tracy Letts’ Tony Award winning August: Osage County on Broadway, as well as its run at London’s National Theatre, the U.S. Tour, and the upcoming production at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Her Steppenwolf credits include Bruce Norris’ A Parallelogram, Bridget Carpenter’s Up, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, Bruce Norris’ The Unmentionables, Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang for My Father, Warren Leight’s Side Man (also in Ireland, Australia and Vail, Colorado), Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy, Brooke Berman’s Until We Find Each Other, Bruce Norris’ Purple Heart (also in Galway, Ireland), The Infidel and The Pain & The Itch, as well as Tracy Letts’ Man from Nebraska, named by TIME Magazine as one of the Year’s Top Ten of 2003, and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros’ The Ordinary Yearning of Miriam Buddwing, among others.

She has directed at many major regional theatres across the US and those additional credits include Regina Taylor’s Magnolia at the Goodman Theatre, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Looking Glass Theatre (co-directed with Jessica Thebus), Bruce Norris’ The Unmentionables at Yale Repertory Theatre, Bruce Norris’ The Pain & The Itch at Playwrights Horizons, Caryl Churchill’s A Number at American Conservatory Theatre, The Drawer Boy at Paper Mill Playhouse, Rona Munroe’s Iron at Manhattan Theatre Club, Jon Robin Baitz’ A Fair Country at the Huntington Theatre Company, The Infidel at Philadelphia Theatre Company and Edwin Sanchez’s Trafficking in Broken Hearts for the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York.

Ms. Shapiro is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and the recipient of a 1996 Princess Grace Award. For her work on August: Osage County she received Chicago’s Jefferson Award, as well as Broadway’s 2008 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Direction of a Play. She joined the faculty of Northwestern University in 2002 and continues there as head of the Graduate Directing Program in Theatre.