Karin Coonrod

Karin Coonrod

KARIN COONROD is a director whose work has been seen and heard across the country and around the world. The New York Times calls her “prodigiously inventive” and the work “galvanic.”  Born to Anna Maria Giacomelli and Roger Coonrod in Chicago with first memories in Noli, Italy, Coonrod studied English at Gordon College in Massachusetts and Theater Directing at Columbia University, where her mentor was Liviu Ciulei. 

She founded two theater companies: Arden Party in downtown New York from 1987-1997 which re-imagined the classics (including Ubu Roi, Godot, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Antigone, Marat/Sade et al) and Compagnia de’ Colombari (2004-present) an international company (based in New York) which began a new tradition of theater in Orvieto, Italy in 2006 with the medieval mystery plays in the public spaces (Strangers and Other Angels 2004-2006); a music-theater piece More Or Less I Am (drawn from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself) performed around New York City (2010); Monteverdi’s Orfeo in Orvieto, Italy (2014); Andras Visky’s Giulia in Orvieto, Italy (2012); Gertrude Stein’s The World is Round is Round is Round (in Albany, New York (2013); her own texts&beheadings/ElizabethR at the Folger Theatre in Washington DC and BAM/Next Wave Festival (2015).

Coonrod is known for her Shakespeare productions including most recently The Merchant in Venice, in the Jewish Ghetto, Venice, Italy (2016) and in subsequent performances in North America; Tempest at La Mama Theatre, New York (2014); Henry VI (1996) and Love’s Labor’s Lost (2011) both at The Public Theater (where she was Artist-in-Residence from 1995-96); King John (2000), Julius Caesar (2003) and Coriolanus (2005) all with Theatre for a New Audience; Othello at Hartford Stage (2005) and many others. 

Other seminal productions include her own creation for the stage of non-dramatic material: Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge developed at the University of Iowa, Sundance Theatre Lab and premiered at New York Theatre Workshop (2001), Anne Sexton’s Transformations with Arden Party (1991-5), a cabaret adaptation of Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York with flamenco dancer La Conja at New York University (2002) and Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast conceived by Abbie Killeen and written by Rose Courtney, at Portland Stage, Maine and St. Clement's Theater, NYC (2018).

She prepared new translations: Vvedensky’s Christmas at the Ivanovs’ with Julia Listengarten (1996); Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba with Nilo Cruz (1997); and Victor or Children Take Over with Frederic Maurin (1994), all of which she directed in acclaimed productions. 

As a guest artist/teacher Coonrod has developed work at NYU, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Cal Arts, Fordham, Gordon College and Univ of Iowa. She is on the faculty at Yale School of Drama.