Albert Innaurato

Albert Innaurato is an American playwright, theatre director, and writer.

Innaurato was born in Philadelphia in 1947. After graduating from California Institute of the Arts, Innaurato attended the Yale School of Drama. He was awarded the Guggenheim Grant, the Rockefeller Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Innaurato collaborated with Christopher Durang on "The Idiots Karamazov", "I Don't Normally Like Poetry but Have You Read Trees", and "Gyp, the Real-Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor" while both were students at Yale University's School of Drama. They performed in all three plays but especially in the last two named. Dressed as priests they played women in summer stock, they opened the Manhattan Theatre Club, almost costing the founder Lynn Meadow her new board. At Yale they frequently appeared in plays with their Drama School classmates Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and their friend, the late Wendy Wasserstein.

In 1976, he drew critical acclaim for the Playwrights Horizons staging of his play "Gemini", which transferred to Broadway, running for 1819 performances and earning him an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New American Play. The screen adaptation, which Innaurato did not write, was released in 1980 under the title "Happy Birthday, Gemini". Showtime filmed the play as written with members of the original cast

"Gemini" was controversial in its time for its frankness about and advocacy of tolerance for homosexuality. It also addresses the difficulties of the acculturation process, and the tensions caused by the different perspectives and values of second and third generation Americans as the hero, a Harvard student, attempts to navigate between American and Italian-American culture. [ Innaurato and Pintauro: Two Italian-American Playwrights, by Carol Bonomo Ahearn, MELUS, Vol. 16, No. 3, Ethnic Theater, (Autumn, 1989 - Autumn, 1990), pp. 113-125 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/467571] ]

"The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie", which provided James Coco with one of his best roles and earned Innaurato another Obie and a second Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding New American Play, has been produced twice Off Broadway, Innaurato's production at Playwrights' Horizons starring Peter Evans won a rave from critic Frank Rich. It was performed in London, where Innaurato directed, Italy, Spain, and Israel.

Additional theatre credits include "Passione" at both Playwrights Horizons (where Innaurato directed) and on Broadway (directed by Frank Langella), "Magda and Callas", "Coming of Age in Soho" (directed by Innaurato twice at Joseph Papp's Public Theater), "Gus and Al" (given two runs at Playwrights' Horizons), and "Dreading Thekla". Early plays, still considered obscene and difficult like 'Earthworms' 'Urlicht and "Italic text"Wisdom Amok' were collected along with Gemini and Benno Blimpie in an Avon book called 'Bizarre Behavior'. Coming of Age in Soho along with Gemini and Benno Blimpie were collected in a Gay Press edition called, The Best plays of Albert Innaurato.

Innaurato's television credits include "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and "", which garnered him an Emmy Award nomination. He was also a frequent contributor of short plays to PBS in the '80s, including the much noticed Death and Taxes, starring Sally Kellerman. He also adapted the book and wrote new lyrics for a broadcast of the Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin/Moss Hart musical "Lady in the Dark". He worked with Byron Janis on a musical treatment of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, given in Cuba as part of a cultural exchange.

Innaurato adapted Puccini's "La Rondine" for Lincoln Center. He is a frequent contributor to the "New York Times", "Vogue", "Vanity Fair", "New York Magazine", and "Newsday". He was a very frequent contributor to Opera News in the 90's. For the Metropolitan Opera Guild, produced by Paul Gruber, he recorded 20 tapes/CDs of opera from Carmen to Death in Venice, some with him at the piano. He has lectured for the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He taught playwriting at Columbia University in the Graduate school for eight years, and has also taught at Princeton and Rutgers. He currently teaches, among other things, Contemporary Drama and Playwriting at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and also teachers in the MFA program at Temple University as well as an undergraduate class in Romanticism.

External links

* [http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=3976 Internet Broadway Database listing]
* [http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&first=Albert&middle=&last=Innaurato Lortel Archives listing]

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