Carey Perloff

Carey Perloff recently completed an acclaimed 25-year tenure as Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, an artistic journey documented in her award-winning 2015 book Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater (City Lights Press). Known for innovative productions of classical plays from many cultures, and for nurturing new voices and new forms of theater, Perloff is celebrated for her collaborations with Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, for ambitious multi-disciplinary commissions such as A Thousand Splendid Suns and Tosca Café, for her lifelong commitment to actor training, and for championing women’s leadership in the American theater. Perloff recently directed Ghosts with Uma Thurman (WTF), Private Lives (Stratford), Colm Toibin’s Pale Sister (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Suns (Arena Stage) and Merchant of Venice with Seana McKenna (Calgary). Also a playwright, Perloff’s work includes The Fit, Kinship, Higher, Luminescence Dating, and her new play Bastiano or The Art of Rivalry, written on a Bogliasco Fellowship. She is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts and des Lettres of the French government, holds an Honorary Doctorate from University of San Francisco, and an Honorary MFA from A.C.T.