Michael Mayer (director)

Michael Mayer (born June 27, 1960) is an American stage and film director. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2007 for directing Spring Awakening.

Biography

Mayer was born in Bethesda, Maryland to Jerry and Louise Mayer.^[1] After graduating from Charles W. Woodward High School, he studied acting at New York University, where he earned an MFA in Theater in 1983.^[2] He began performing onstage in New York City but by 1990 had turned his efforts to directing, working as a freelancer while also teaching at NYU, the Lincoln Center Theatre Institute, and the Juilliard School.^[3]

Broadway

In 2007, Mayer won his first Tony Award for his direction of the musical adaptation of Spring Awakening (2006), which also took the award for Best Musical. He was nominated for the 2002 Tony for his direction of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which he then directed on London's West End. Mayer also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for both Spring Awakening and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Other Broadway credits include The Lion in Winter (1999), the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Side Man (1998; Drama Desk Award), the 1998 Tony Award-winning revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge starring Anthony LaPaglia and Brittany Murphy, for which he was nominated for a Tony and won the Drama Desk Award, and Triumph of Love, the musical starring Betty Buckley, Susan Egan and F. Murray Abraham, with music by Jeffrey Stock and lyrics by Susan Bikenhead. He is also currently working on American Idiot the musical, based on Green Day's 2004 album American Idiot.

Off-Broadway

Mayer's off-Broadway directing credits include The Credeaux Canvas, John C. Russell's Stupid Kids, Peter Hedges' Baby Anger, Theresa Rebeck's View of the Dome, and the New York premiere of Janusz Glowacki's Antigone in New York.

Film

After directing on- and off-Broadway for more than 15 years, Mayer made his feature film directorial debut with A Home at the End of the World, starring Colin Farrell and Robin Wright Penn, in 2004. He went on to make the family film Flicka (2006), an adaptation of the story My Friend Flicka, which became a hit in DVD market. In the same year, he directed a sleeper titled Graduation, which is currently a hit with Netflix's instant programming audience. (IMDb has this film's direction attributed to a different Michael Mayer.) He has also been confirmed to be directing the film adaptation of Green Day's American Idiot.

Other work

He directed and co-wrote the stage adaptation of Green Day's 2004 album American Idiot, also titled American Idiot which premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, on September 4, 2009, and ran through November 15, 2009.^[4] The show officially opened on April 20, 2010 on Broadway to positive reviews, and closed on April 24, 2011.

Stage productions

Broadway

• American Idiot (2010)
• Spring Awakening (2006)
• Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002)
• 'night, Mother (2004)
• After the Fall (2004)
• An Almost Holy Picture (2002)
• Uncle Vanya (2000)
• You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999)
• Triumph of Love (1997)

Off-Broadway

• Everyday Rapture (2009)
• Our House
• 10 Million Miles
• Spring Awakening
• Missing Persons
• America Dreaming
• Hundreds of Hats

National tour

• Angels in America (1994)

References

External links

• Michael Mayer at the Internet Broadway Database
• Michael Mayer at the Internet Movie Database
• Steven Drukman. "A Two-Career Man: Theater Director And Jewish Mother," The New York Times, January 3, 1999. Retrieved July 2, 2007.
• announcement for 10 Million Miles
• Mayer milestones
• Interview with Mayer about Spring Awakening