Albert Innaurato
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Albert Innaurato is an American playwright, theatre director, and writer.
Innaurato collaborated with Christopher Durang on The Idiots Karamazov, I Don't Normally Like Poetry but Have You Read Trees, and Gyp, the Real-Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor while both were students at Yale University.
In 1976, he drew critical acclaim for the Playwrights Horizons staging of his play Gemini, which transferred to Broadway, running for 1819 performances and earning him an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New American Play. The screen adaptation was released in 1980 under the title Happy Birthday, Gemini.
Gemini addresses the difficulties of the acculturation process, and the tensions caused by the different perspectives and values of second and third generation Americans as the hero, a Harvard student, attempts to navigate between American and Italian-American culture. [1]
The Transformation of Benno Blimpie, which provided James Coco with one of his earliest roles and earned Innuarto another Obie and a second Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding New American Play, has been produced twice off-Broadway and performed in London, Italy, Spain, and Israel.
Additional theatre credits include Passione at both Playwrights Horizons and on Broadway, Magda and Callas, Coming of Age in Soho (directed by Innaurato twice at Joseph Papp's Public Theater), Gus and Al, and Dreading Thekla.
Innaurato's television credits include The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and Verna: U.S.O. Girl, which garnered him an Emmy Award nomination. He also adapted the book and wrote new lyrics for a broadcast of the Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin/Moss Hart musical Lady in the Dark.
Innaurto adapted Puccini's La Rondine for Lincoln Center. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and Newsday. He has lectured for the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He currently teaches, among other things, Contemporary Drama and Playwriting at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
