R. Thad Taylor

R. Thad Taylor (August 29, 1925, in Wendell, Idaho - October 5, 2006 in Los Angeles, California) was an American producer, director and founder of the Shakespeare Society of America, whose Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood, California — a mini replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre — was dedicated to the production of classical plays. Taylor's Globe staged all of the plays in Shakespeare's first folio at the playhouse as well as productions of Shakespeare Apocrypha like "The Birth of Merlin," "The Puritan" and "Sir John Oldcastle", the latter production directed by Taylor himself in 1986, and non-Shakespearean classics like "The Alchemist". Among the awards Taylor received were the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award (shared with DeVeren Bookwalter) for his production of "Cyrano de Bergerac" and the Drama-Logue Award for his direction of "Hamlet."