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Luigi SalerniQuick Contacts email the dept. of performing arts email the music dept. email the theater dept.
UIC Department of Performing Arts |
Directing, Playwriting  Recipient of multiple artistic and teaching awards including two prestigious Council of Excellence in Teaching and Learning Awards at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Luigi Salerni directs annually and teaches courses in Directing, Playwriting, Contemporary Performance, and Collaboration. His professional artistic life has been dedicated to the nurturing and development of contemporary writers, actors, and directors. Formerly Artistic Director of The Cricket Theatre in Minneapolis, he led that theatre (which was dedicated to the creation and performance of new American plays) to garner more Theatre Critics Circle Awards in all aspects of performance and production than any other theatre in the region. As director, his work has been seen in theatres throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa including Denver Theatre Center, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Focus Theatre (Dublin), Theatre of the Open Eye in New York, the Dallas Theatre Center, Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, among many others. In addition to teaching and directing at UIC, his special interest and commitment is to global educational and collaborative artistic partnerships. His translation of Federico Garcia Lorca's dreamplay Asi que pasen cinco años (When Five Years Pass) premiered in Los Angeles at the international arts festival "Theatre, Culture, and the Arts in Lorca's Spain." Partnering with Cuban-American painter Juan Gonzalez and Argentine-American composer Gustavo Leone, he recreated that acclaimed production with student performers at UIC. Last season, he directed the classic 1940s romantic comedy Dear Ruth, by stage and screen writer Norman Krasna and a contemporary rendering of Hamlet that reinforced his reputation as an innovative and provocative theatre artist. For the 2008-09 season, he will direct Lanford Wilson’s Hot l Baltimore, the classic ensemble play that established Wilson’s place in history as a quintessentially American master. |
