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Eugene Lion
Originally a New Yorker, now
a playwright without borders, Eugene Lion has written, directed choreographed,
acted and designed for theatre, film and television. He is the first
North American to direct at The Abbey, Ireland’s national theatre,
and he has staged and written works at the Pushkin in Moscow, Dublin’s
Gate Theatre, The Advent in Nashville, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre,
the Edinburgh Festival, and on and off Broadway. He was artistic director
of the Hawaii Public Theater and associate director of The Guthrie Theater
in Minneapolis, as well as artistic director of Guthrie 2, its alternative
stage. Among the authors he has directed are Jacques Audiberti, Samuel
Beckett, Ugo Betti, Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Jean Genet,
Michel de Ghelderode, Robert Hellman, Michael Ondaatje, George Bernard
Shaw and Peter Weiss.
He debuted as choreographer
and designer in 1963 in New York, where during the Vietnam War he served
as arts and political director of the Washington Square Methodist Church,
which granted sanctuary to that war’s first draft resisters; the church
also reached national audiences via network television, while providing
a home for insurgent theatre companies such as the Polish Lab and the
Bread and Puppet Theatre. Paralleling Lion’s independent efforts is
a lifelong collaboration with his wife, dancer-actor-choreographer-painter
Jo Lechay. Together they have pioneered experimental performing techniques
and created more than 40 dance, theatre and multidisciplinary works,
touring Canada, the United States and Europe. Among his produced translations
are Betti’s The Burnt Flower-Bed and Queen and the Rebels,
Frisch’s The Physicists, Genet’s The Maids, Ghelderode’s
Women at the Tomb and Alexander Ostrovski’s Fools!
Based in Montreal and British Columbia, he writes serious comedies and
subversive musicals.
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