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Tony Taccone ’72, artistic director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, Calif. — one of the most prominent regional theaters in the country — returns to campus this month as the special guest and alumni honoree at the 14th annual Boston College Arts Festival, which takes place April 26-28.
In addition to the arts award celebration and reception on April 27, Taccone will appear in two other public events during the festival: an April 26 panel discussion on theater direction along with Paul Daigneault ’87, founder and producing artistic director of SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston, and Kate Maguire ’78, executive director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival; and on April 27, “Inside the BC Studio,” where he will talk about his career in an interview-type format.
The panel discussion and “Inside the BC Studio” events are free and open to the public; the arts award celebration is free, but requires registration [call ext.2-4757 or see www.bc.edu/artsawards].
Taccone has staged more than 35 shows at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, including world premieres by Culture Clash, Rinde Eckert, David Edgar, Danny Hoch, Geoff Hoyle, Quincy Long, Itamar Moses and Lemony Snicket. He also took two shows from Berkeley Rep to Broadway — Sarah Jones’s Tony Award-winning “Bridge & Tunnel” and Carrie Fisher’s “Wishful Drinking” — and commissioned Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” for which he co-directed the world premiere. Two of Taccone’s recent shows transferred to London, and two scripts that he penned are having their premieres this year.
For more on Taccone, see http://bit.ly/hF50Jl. For times and locations of his Arts Festival appearances, and information on other festival events, see the Arts Festival website at http://www.bc.edu/artsfestival.