McCarter's Emily Mann Named 2011 Person of the Year by the National Theatre Conference

Emily Mann, playwright, director and artistic director of McCarter Theatre has been named the 2011 Person of the Year by the National Theatre Conference.

The award recognizes individuals who have made an outstanding and noteworthy contribution to the theater.

“The entire McCarter community congratulates Emily on receiving this prestigious honor," McCarter Theatre Board President Brian McDonald said. "This wonderful recognition validates what our audiences and supporters have known for years – Emily Mann is an extraordinary talent and a national treasure.” 

An award-winning director and playwright, Mann is in her 22^nd season as Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre.

Under her leadership, McCarter won the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater.

Mann's numerous McCarter directing credits include Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics with Jimmy Smits (also on Broadway); the world premiere of Christopher Durang’s Miss Witherspoon with Kristine Nielsen (also off-Broadway); the world premiere of Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I with Tyne Daly and Brian Murray at McCarter, (also off-Broadway); the world premiere of Sarah Treem’s The How and The Why with Mercedes Ruehl; All Over with Rosemary Harris (also Roundabout Theatre Company; 2003 Obie Award for Directing); A Doll House with Cynthia Nixon; The Cherry Orchard with Jane Alexander, John Glover, and Avery Brooks; and Three Sisters with Frances McDormand, Linda Hunt and Mary Stuart Masterson.

Her plays include Execution of Justice (winner of Helen Hayes and Joseph Jefferson awards; nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Circle awards); Still Life (six Obie Awards); Mrs. Packard (recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays); Greensboro (A Requiem); and Annulla, An Autobiography.

She wrote and directed Having Our Say, adapted from the book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations; winner of NAACP and Joseph Jefferson awards). For writing the screenplay to Having Our Say, she earned both a Peabody Award and Christopher Award. A winner of the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the Edward Albee Last Frontier Directing Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its council. A collection of her plays, Testimonies: Four Plays, has been published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc.  

This season, Mann’s directing credits include the world premiere of Phaedra Backwards by Marina Carr at McCarter, and the world premiere of The Convert by Danai Gurira, a co-production with McCarter Theatre, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group. In spring 2012, she will direct A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway with Wood Harris, Nicole Ari Parker, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Blair Underwood, and her adaption of The House of Bernard Alba will be produced in January 2012 at The Almeida Theater in London. She is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University.  

The National Theatre Conference, founded in 1925, is a cooperative association of leaders of the American theater. The conference operates as a theatrical "think tank" and meets annually to review and confer on matters pertaining to the welfare and development of the theatre and to honor outstanding achievement of organizations and individuals in the field.