Jerry Zaks is a stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me a Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Guys and Dolls. He made his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Grease and made his directing debut with the off-Broadway production of Beyond Therapy. He has also directed many other productions such as Girl Crazy, Stairway to Paradise, 101 Dalmatians Musical, and the Broadway production of Sister Act. His screen credits include Outrageous Fortune, and Husbands and Wives. He received the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater in 1994.
He’s the go-to guy if you’ve got a musical that’s supposed to make people laugh. And we talked about what it takes to make people slap their knees, as well as . . .
- How he agreed to direct a show even though he didn’t know what directing really was.
- The best advice he ever got, which made him change his attitude overnight.
- Why his rehearsal rooms are CLOSED to everyone but the actors.
- How (and why) Guys and Dolls wasn’t working and what he and his choreographer did to fix it.
- What a show has to do within its first ten minutes, or it’s sunk.
Once on This Island, Winner of the 2018 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, is the sweeping, universal tale of Ti Moune, a fearless peasant girl in search of her place in the world, and ready to risk it all for love. Check it out here: onceonthisisland.com
Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway