Carey Perloff & Olympia Dukakis
Carey Perloff is a director, writer, educator and producer who served as Artistic Director of American Conservatory Theater from 1992 – 2018. She has spent her career reimagining great classical plays and developing new work for the theater (From Euripides' Hecuba to The Tosca Project, a piece dancers and actors), and is best known for her decades-long collaboration with playwright Tom Stoppard. The author of eight plays including Kinship (Williamstown Theater Festival, w/ Cynthia Nixon) and The Fit (SF Playhouse), she wrote Beautiful Chaos: A life in the Theater (City Lights Press 2016) which was selected as San Francisco’s One City One Book big read. Perloff most recently directed Ghosts with Uma Thurman at Williamstown, Pale Fire at Dublin’s Gate Theater and A Thousand Splendid Suns at Arena Stage; she is currently the Artistic Consultant for Val Caniparoli’s major new ballet Jekyll and Hyde at the royal Finnish Ballet in Helsinki. Her new play Bastiano or the Art of Rivalry will be “workshopped” virtually by New York Stage and Film this summer. Olympia Dukakis has been Carey’s heroine, mentor and collaborator for thirty years.
Olympia Dukakis is an acclaimed actress, director, teacher and theatrical visionary who turns 89 years old on June 19, 2020. Born in Lowell Massachusetts, Olympia has performed in both classical and contemporary work with equal brilliance, returning to the Williamstown Theater Festival many times to perform Chekhov, winning an Obie award for The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and ultimately running her own theater, The Whole Theater Company in Montclair, New Jersey, for twenty years. The Whole Theater was a haven for actors and ensembles who wanted to deeply explore dramatic literature without the pressure of the commercial theater. Over her long and storied film career, Olympia won an Oscar for her performance in Moonstruck (1987) and has appeared in dozens of major movies and television shows. Olympia was a regular presence at American Conservatory Theater during Carey Perloff’s tenure, joining the Board of Trustees, and performing leads in Hecuba (twice),Vigil, A Mother, and Elektra. Olympia is an inspired teacher who continues to coach actors and inspire artists around the world.