Anna D. Shapiro

Anna Davida Shapiro (born March 10, 1966) is an American theater director, was the artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theater Company, and a professor at Northwestern University. Throughout her career, she has directed both the Steppenwolf Theater Company production of August: Osage County (2007) along with its Broadway debut (2008-2009), the Broadway debuts of The Motherfucker with the Hat (2011) and Fish in the Dark (2014), and Broadway revivals of This Is Our Youth and Of Mice and Men, both in 2014. She won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for her direction of August: Osage County. Early years Shapiro was born in Evanston, Illinois, the youngest of four children. She attended Evanston Township High School and graduated in 1983. She later went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts in theater direction from Columbia College Chicago in 1990. She then attended graduate school and received a Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama, and was the recipient of a 1996 Princess Grace Award. Career Her credits include the premieres of Until We Find Each Other, The Pain and the Itch, Purple Heart, Three Days of Rain, Drawer Boy, I Never Sang for my Father, A Fair Country, Iron and Man from Nebraska. She also directed Edwin Sanchez's Trafficking in Broken Hearts for the Atlantic Theater Company. She directed the world premieres of The Ordinary Yearning of Miriam Buddwing by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros at Steppenwolf in 2001, and Bruce Norris's The Infidel at both Steppenwolf and the Philadelphia Theatre Company. After directing Tracy Letts' August: Osage County at Steppenwolf and winning the Jefferson Award for Best Director, she directed the play on Broadway, with all but two of the original cast, and won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play, as well as the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Play. August: Osage County was named by Time magazine as its number one theater production for 2007.