Following his acclaimed production of Edward Bond’s Saved in 2001, American theatre director Robert Woodruff returns to Theatre for a New Audience to direct this season’s production of Bond’s Chair.
Woodruff√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s career began in 1972 when he co-founded San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre. In 1976, he established the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, where he first worked with the writer Sam Shepard. Woodruff went on to stage many of Shepard√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s American premieres, including Curse of the Starving Class at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now The Public Theater) in 1978. The pairing was the first of several long-term working relationships between Woodruff and various playwrights, including Charles Mee and Edward Bond.
From 2002 to 2007, Woodruff served as Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre, where he directed Bond√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s play Olly’s Prison, as well as Mee√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Full Circle, winner of the 2000 Elliot Norton Award for Best Director.
Woodruff has directed plays performed at Lincoln Center Theatre, BAM, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and The Mark Taper Forum Los Angeles. Internationally, his work has been seen in Edinburgh, Spoleto, Sydney, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam. He has taught at New York University, Columbia University. He is now on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama.
In 2007, Woodruff was named a USA Biller Fellow by United States Artists, an arts advocacy foundation dedicated to the support and promotion of America’s top living artists.