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Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille was the first choreographer to integrate dance into musical theatre as a means of enhancing the story-telling, rather than as a divertissement.
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (also known as LeRoi Jones) was a playwright, poet, essayist, critic, and activist. He was a prominent figure in African-American literary culture.
Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud was a French playwright and director. After being expelled from the Surrealist Movement, he established the experimental Theatre of Cruelty.
Arlene Phillips
With a career spanning over 50 years, Arlene Phillips is one of the UK's most foremost choreographers across stage and screen.
Arthur Lessac
Beginning in the 1930s, Arthur Lessac became one of the most highly regarded teachers of voice, singing, and movement in the theatrical world.
Augusto Boal
Brazilian director and teacher Augusto Boal developed the revolutionary philosophy and practice of Theatre of the Oppressed.
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German theatre practitioner and playwright, who became the leading proponent of epic theatre.
Bob Fosse
Bob Fosse's distinctive style of choreography is renowned throughout the world and has become a cornerstone in musical theatre dance.
Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh is a notable member of the theatre community for his participation in transforming musical theatre into a global, highly profitable industry.
Camille A. Brown
Camille A. Brown is a dancer, choreographer, director and dance educator across stage and screen. In 2006 she founded Camille A. Brown & Dancers.
David Belasco
David Belasco was a famed American playwright, director, producer, and theatre manager who innovated the standards and techniques of staging and design.
David Garrick
David Garrick was one of the most influential actor-managers of the 18th-century London stage.
David Merrick
Nicknamed the "abominable showman", David Merrick was one of Broadway's biggest producers known for his outrageous publicity stunts.
Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault was an Irish impresario, known for his spectacular melodramas on both the English and American stages.
Earle Gister
Earle Gister was an acting teacher and a pioneer in training, whose unique take on Stanislavski’s system of actions influenced generations of actors.
Edward Gordon Craig
Edward Gordon Craig was one of the most influential stage designers of the early twentieth century. He grew up in the theatre as the son of actress Ellen Terry.
Efua T. Sutherland
Efua Sutherland, referred to as the “queen mother” of modern Ghanaian theatre, worked tirelessly throughout her life to develop and promote Ghanaian theatre.
Ellen Stewart
Ellen Stewart founded La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, one of the first off-off-Broadway theatres.
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator was a theater director and producer best known for originating the style of epic theater.
Eugenio Barba
Eugenio Barba is a major director, theorist, teacher, and researcher in twentieth century alternative theatre.
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was a Broadway impresario, best remembered for his long-running series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies.
Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
Georg II--the “Theatre Duke”--is credited with developing the concept of the modern theatre director.
George Faison
George Faison is an award-winning dancer and choreographer. He became the first African-American to win a Tony Award for Choreography.
Gillian Lynne
Gillian Lynne was an English choreographer and dancer who breathed new life into musical theatre with the hit shows Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.
Hal Prince
Hal Prince was a hugely influential and prolific director and producer famous for shepherding many iconic musicals to the Broadway stage.
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones as an architect and theatre designer, responsible for bringing the Renaissance into England.
Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Lecoq was a French actor, director, and movement coach best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement and mime.
Jamie Lloyd
Jamie Lloyd is a pioneering British director whose bold and minimalist visions of classic plays and musicals have laid new groundwork in modern theatre.
Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre and a renowned theatre choreographer, director, and producer.
Jerzy Grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski was an experimental theatre director whose work influenced practitioners such as Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba.
Joan Littlewood
Joan Littlewood was an innovative and experimental English director who broke away from traditional middle-class theatre and expanded the classic repertory.
Josie Rourke
Josie Rourke is an English theatre and film director who is notable for championing diverse casting, and female-led production teams.
Julie Taymor
Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Julie Taymor is the daughter of Elizabth Bernstein, a political science professor and Melvin Lester Taymor, a gynecologist.
Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell is an innovative British theatre director whose unique style has divided both critics and audiences.
Konstantin Stanislavski
Russian teacher and director Konstantin Stanislavski is credited with developing the System, a training program and methodology for actors.
Laura Keene
Laura Keene was one of the first commercially successful female theatre impresarios in the United States.
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg, founder of Method Acting, was an American actor, director, and teacher who founded the Group Theatre.
Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez, the “Father of Chicano Theatre," founded the first Chicano theatre company and inspired other companies to spring up across the southwest America.
Madame Vestris
Madame Vestris was an 19th-century actor-manager in London and became one of the most influential impresarios of the day.
Marianne Elliott
Marianne Elliott is a British theatre director who is renowned for her collaborative partnerships and her intense research period before rehearsals begin.
Marlies Yearby
Marlies Yearby is an artist, activist, choreographer, and director. She creates works in theatre, film, and multimedia spaces
Michael Bennett
Michael Bennett was an American choreographer, director, dancer, and writer prolific throughout the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s until his early death in 1987.
Michael Chekhov
Michael Chekhov was a Russian-American actor, director, and theatre practitioner. He was a nephew of Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski.
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Saint-Denis was a French actor, theatre director, and theorist who was a major influence in European theatre from the 1930s onwards.
Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He is known for his use of improvisation and heightened realism.
Peter Brook
Peter Brook was a pioneering English theatre and film director. Based in France from the 1970s, he founded the International Centre for Theatre Research.
Peter Hall
Peter Hall was a British director of theatre and opera known for guiding several large theatre companies during his lengthy and distinguished career.
Richard D’Oyly Carte
Richard D’Oyly Carte had a huge impact on early musical theatre through his collaboration with Gilbert & Sullivan and the D'Oyley Carte Opera company.
Richard Pilbrow
Richard Pilbrow is considered to be one of the world’s leading theatre consultants.
Robert Cohen
Robert Cohen is an eminent director, teacher, author, and playwright, best known for for his creation of the “GOTE” system for acting.
Robert Edmond Jones
Robert Edmond Jones was an American designer in sets, lights, and costumes who embraced the movements of symbolism and expressionism in theatre.
Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson is a director, producer, and designer in contemporary experimental theatre.
Rose McClendon
Rose McClendon was a leading African-American Broadway actress and co-founder of the Negro People's Theatre. She was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Sam Mendes
Sam Mendes is a multi-award winning director, who has been at the forefront of British theatre and film for over 30 years.
Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner was an American actor and acting teacher who developed the approach to acting known as The Meisner Technique.
Savion Glover
Savion Glover is a virtuoso rhythm tap dancer and choreographer who is committed to revitalizing tap dancing for the younger generation.
Sir Augustus Henry Glossop Harris
Augustus Harris is rightly known as the “Father of Modern Pantomime.”
Sonia Friedman
Sonia Friedman is an international theatrical producer and founder of multi-award winning Sonia Friedman Productions.
Stella Adler
Stella Adler was a Jewish-American actress, director, and teacher. She was one of the founding members of the Group Theatre in New York City.
Steven Berkoff
Steven Berkoff is a highly experimental director, writer, and actor whose style has been described as "in yer face" theatre.
Tatsumi Hijikata
One of the two founding creators of the practice of Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata was known for his highly stylized form of dance-theatre.
Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn is an accomplished British theatre director, who is known for his collaborations with the RSC, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the National Theatre.
Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is an American dancer, choreographer and author who is best known for her work in ballet and modern dance.
Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen was a German-American actress who developed an influential acting technique that is widely practised today.