Zimmerman, Mary

▪ 2003

      On June 2, 2002, the Tony Award for best direction of a play went to Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses, which also received nominations for best play and best scenic design. Although the central feature of Metamorphoses—Zimmerman's adaptation of tales of mythology from the Roman poet Ovid's classic epic poem of the same name—was an onstage pool in and around which the stories were enacted, Zimmerman had made her own splash in the theatre world some years earlier. Such original adaptations as The Arabian Nights (first produced in 1992), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1994), Journey to the West (1995), Eleven Rooms of Proust (1998), and The Odyssey (1999) had already gone far toward illustrating her inventiveness and sealing her reputation as a creative artist of distinction, and Metamorphoses itself had already been performed to great acclaim at Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre in 1998 and thereafter at Berkeley (Calif.) Repertory Theatre, Seattle (Wash.) Repertory Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and Off-Broadway before it moved to Broadway in early 2002.

      Zimmerman was born on Aug. 23, 1960, in Lincoln, Neb., and was educated at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (B.S., 1982; M.A., 1985; Ph.D., 1994). She joined the staff of Northwestern as an adjunct assistant in 1984 and went on to serve as teaching assistant (1985–87), instructor (1987–90), and assistant professor (1994–99) before becoming (1999) a full professor in the department of performance studies. In addition, she was an ensemble member of Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago and served as an artistic associate of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Among her numerous honours were 10 Chicago-area Joseph Jefferson Awards and, in 1998, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”

      Shortly after Zimmerman's win at the Tonys, she was at work readying her next project—Galileo Galilei, a new opera by Philip Glass—for its premiere at the Goodman Theatre in late June. Zimmerman was one of the writers of the libretto and served as director of the production, which—in order to give the story a happy ending—traced the life of Galileo in reverse, from his last days as a lonely old man back through his years of scientific study and finally to his childhood. Following its run at the Goodman, the opera was presented at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Academy of Music in October and then, in November, in the Barbican International Theatre Events in London.

Barbara Whitney

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