Professor Anne Bogart Receives SDCF Gordon Davidson Award

Theatre Professor and Head of the Directing Concentration Anne Bogart will receive the 2023 Gordon Davidson Award, presented by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. Named in honor of the founding artistic director of Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group and one of the visionary leaders of the resident theatre movement, the Gordon Davidson Award recognizes a director or choreographer for lifetime achievement and distinguished service in national not-for-profit theatre. The award will be presented to Bogart at a ceremony in the spring.

The award selection committee congratulated Bogart for her career, which spans five decades. "Anne has been a relentless, joyous researcher, experimenter, provocateur, and practitioner. She has delved deeply into the nature of theatre-making and has shared her discoveries with us through productions, books, a codified system of expressive movement, and generous mentorship. From small living rooms to regional theaters to large opera houses and beyond, Anne has made theatre as a way of exploring storytelling, community, collaboration, and education. Throughout that journey, Anne has touched the lives and careers of hundreds of theatre makers. Her artistic practice and her altruistic spirit have shown us that one can make a life in the theatre that both expands the art form and enlarges the field."

In addition to her role at Columbia, Bogart was also the co-Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Skidmore College, Bard College, and Cornish College. She was a recipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Richard B. Fisher Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received the 2016 Alfred Drake Award from Brooklyn College. She is also the author of six books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then, You Act, Conversations with Anne, What’s the Story and, most recently, The Art of Resonance. Recent theatre works include Existentialism (La Mama and Talking Band), Eastland (Trinity Theater, Dublin), The Beautiful Lady (La Mama), and Composition as Explanation (Court Theater, Chicago). Recent works with SITI include Radio Christmas Carol, Falling & Loving, The Bacchae, Chess Match, The Theater is a Blank Page, Steel Hammer, Persians, A Rite, Café Variations, Trojan Women, Lilith (New York City Opera) and Brecht/Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Opera).