Gregory Mosher (born 1949) is an American director and producer of stage productions at the Lincoln Center and Goodman Theatres, on and off-Broadway, at the Royal National Theatre, and in the West End. He is also a film director[1] and television director, producer, and writer. He currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for the Arts at Hunter College.
Early career
Born 1949 in New York City, Mosher attended Oberlin College, Ithaca College and the Juilliard School where he was the school's first directing student. After leaving Juilliard in his third year, he moved to Chicago to assist William Woodman, head of the Goodman Theatre, who appointed him to lead the newly formed Goodman Stage 2, one of the pioneering theatres of the 1970s Chicago theatre scene.[citation needed] Three years later, after Woodman's resignation, he became director of the Goodman. Beginning with a new version of Richard Wright’s Native Son, and focusing on new work, the Goodman soon gained wide national attention.[citation needed] Among his early work was the first production of David Mamet's American Buffalo.[2]
Lincoln Center
After seven seasons at the Goodman, Mosher was invited by former New York City mayor John V. Lindsay to head the theatre at Lincoln Center, which, despite the leadership of such theatre giants as Elia Kazan and Joseph Papp, had faltered through much of its twenty-year history. At the time of Lindsay's offer, the theatre had not produced a play in over four years; it had virtually no operating capital, little ability to generate it, and no community of artists to energize the stages.
Mosher launched an innovative production schedule and revolutionized marketing efforts, discarding the traditional subscriber arrangement to seek a younger, less affluent, and more diverse audience. These efforts, supported by a remarkable board and staff, and a freshly enthused giving community, quickly sparked theatrical life; the company's two houses were soon filled, and annual income rose within two years to nearly $45 million.
Lincoln Center Theater productions were adapted into a dozen feature films, presented in cast recordings, and on television for NBC and PBS. Productions at the Beaumont and the Newhouse Theaters frequently were extended or transferred for long runs on Broadway, as well as venues in England, Europe and Japan.[citation needed]
Broadway
In addition to Lincoln Center Theater shows on Broadway, Mosher has produced and/or directed several other productions. These include "A Streetcar Named Desire" (starring Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin), "James Joyce's The Dead", John Leguizamo's "Freak", and the 2010 production of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" (starring Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson), and "That Championship Season" (starring Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Noth, Jason Patric, and Kiefer Sutherland).
Mosher directed and produced the premieres of twenty-three of David Mamet's plays, beginning with American Buffalo in 1975. His Broadway production of Glengarry Glen Ross garnered Mamet the Pulitzer Prize. His collaboration with Samuel Beckett spanned the final decade of that writer's life, and included Beckett's own production of Endgame, and the Lincoln Center production of Waiting for Godot, directed by Mike Nichols.
During South Africa's apartheid period, Mosher was a frequent visitor to Johannesburg and Soweto. He organized the first-ever festival of South African drama (Woza Afrika!) at Lincoln Center, showcasing theatrical productions and funneling tens of thousands of dollars to Township arts groups and individual artists. In 2015, he traveled with a young company to perform Sophocles' "Antigone" in schools, community centers, and a juvenile prison in Nairobi and the Cape Town and Johannesburg townships. In 2017, he directed the American premiere[3] of Ferdinand Von Schirach's Terror for Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre.[4]
During the NEA "decency" debate of the early 1990s, Mosher, with the support of John Lindsay, was one of a very small group of arts administrators to decline the Endowment's annual grant.
President Lee C. Bollinger created the Arts Initiative at Columbia University in 2004 to change the role of the arts across the university, and hired Mosher as its first director, a position he stepped down from in Fall 2010.[citation needed] Since its inception the Initiative has developed programs to enliven the arts on campus and to link the university's intellectual mission to New York's cultural life. Among its programs are Passport to NYC, which provides Columbia students with free admission at 28 New York City museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and the Guggenheim.[citation needed]
Brook staged Tierno Bokar, based on the life of the Malian Sufi of the same name. The play was adapted for the stage by Marie-Hélène Estienne from Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar, le sage de Bandiagara by Amadou Hampate Ba (translated into English as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar).[5] Columbia University produced 44 related events, lectures, and workshops that were attended by over 3,200 people throughout the run of Tierno Bokar. Panel discussions focused on topics of religious tolerance and Muslim tradition in West Africa.[citation needed]
