Mel Shapiro / About Author
In a career spanning more than five decades, legendary stage director and acting coach Mel Shapiro has earned numerous awards and has worked with countless high-profile stars. On Broadway, he directed the Tony Award-winning musical Two Gentlemen of Verona, and earned the NY Drama Critics’ Best American Play award for the off-Broadway production of The House of Blue Leaves. As a director, Shapiro has worked extensively across the U.S. and internationally, including with the New York Shakespeare Festival, in London at various venues, at the Tyrone Guthrie in Minneapolis, and at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.Throughout his career, Shapiro has worked as an acting coach and performing arts educator. Currently, he is professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and previously he served as a founding member of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, as the Head of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University, and as an advisor to Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theater program. As an acting coach, Shapiro has coached stars like Allison Janney and Sammy Davis, Jr.He is the author of An Actor Performs and is based in Los Angeles.