Joanne Gordon
(562) 985-7891
jgordon@csulb.edu
chair, artistic director
Dr. Gordon is an award-winning director whose accolades include five Drama-Logue Awards, a Los Angeles Critics Choice Award and being named “Best of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times. She has been instrumental in developing a significant number of original plays and musicals with Cal Rep and is in constant demand as a director both nationally and internationally. Her adaptation of “Love, Bukowski” was nominated for several awards by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, which also conferred on Cal Rep the Polly Warfield Award for best season, a tribute to her first full year as artistic director. She has directed a number of Stephen Sondheim works worldwide, including the first Chinese language production of West Side Story in Beijing. Recent published work includes Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook; an essay on Stephen Sondheim in the Encyclopedia of American Biography, and an essay on August Wilson for the Casebook Series. She is a frequent contributor to The Sondheim Review and her first book, Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater of Stephen Sondheim was one of the earliest studies of this great artist’s work. As an internationally renowned Sondheim scholar, Gordon directs and conducts workshops in both the U.S. and Europe. Gordon did her undergraduate work in South Africa and her Ph.D. at UCLA.