Friends Speaker Series: Tony & Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Michael Cristofer
When:
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2018 6:00p -
8:00p
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2018 6:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Metcalf Ballroom
775 Commonwealth Ave, Second Floor
Boston, MA 02215
Admission:
$25
Categories:
< 21, Art, Film, Lectures & Conferences, Performing Arts, University
Michael Cristofer is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. Cristofer started his career as an actor and then became a playwright. In 1977, his play The Shadow Box opened on Broadway to rave reviews. The play would be nominated for multiple Drama Desk and Tony Awards, and would go on to win the 1977 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Cristofer later adapted the The Shadow Box into a television movie directed by film legend Paul Newman. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards and won the 1980 Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Made for Television.
Cristofer would continue his illustrious theatrical run directing Candida on Broadway in 1981, as well as writing numerous plays, such as Breaking Up, Black Angel, The Lady and the Clarinet, Amazing Grace, and Man in the Ring, which received the 2017 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. As a stage actor, Cristofer has appeared on Broadway in A View from the Bridge (2010), Hamlet (1992), and The Cherry Orchard (1977) with Irene Worth, Raul Julia, and Meryl Streep. He has also appeared in Don't Go Gentle (2012), The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (2010), A Body of Water (2008), Trumpery (2007), and Romeo and Juliet (2007).
Cristofer worked as artistic advisor for eight years and then co-artistic director of River Arts Repertory in Woodstock, New York, a company which produced new plays by writers such as Richard Nelson, Mac Wellman, Eric Overmyer, and others.
An accomplished screenwriter. Cristofer has written the screenplays for such films as Falling in Love (1984), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Breaking Up (1997), Casanova (2005), and Georgia O'Keeffe (2009). His directorial credits include Body Shots (1999), Original Sins (2001), and the HBO Pictures film Gia (1998) starring Angelina Jolie, which was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won Cristofer the 1999 Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television. Cristofer will also be directing the upcoming crime drama The Night Clerk, starring Tye Sheridan and Helen Hunt.
Cristofer is also known for his roles on hit television shows, such as The Magician, Gunsmoke, The Rookies, Kojak, Rubicon, Suits, Smash, Ray Donovan, Elementary, and American Horror Story: Coven. He is currently on the main cast of the USA Network's hit thriller Mr. Robot as E Corp CEO Phillip Price.
