Berkeley Repertory Theatre artistic director Tony Taccone, now in his 10th season with the theater, is the subject of an excellent new article in Theatre Communications Group’s American Theatre magazine. The author is actor/writer Ellen McLaughlin, the original angel in Angels in America, which Taccone originally co-directed with Oskar Eustis at San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre.

This has been quite a year for the 55-year-old Taccone. He took
Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner’s Brundibar to New York.
He took Sarah Jones’ extraordinary Tony Award-winning show Bridge & Tunnel to Broadway, and he continues in his collaboration with Culture Clash after last season’s world premiere of Zorro in Hell.

The whole article is worth reading (check it out here). Or at the very least, check out a couple of Taccone’s quotes below:

“Every theatre in America talks about risk. It’s on every brochure. Everybody wants to say they take risks, and nobody wants to live with what happens if you actually take them. I say to our audience, “I don?t love everything we do, but I respect everything we do. This theatre is big enough, confident enough and responsible enough to deal with ideas and feelings that challenge us all.”

“Lately, working with Sarah Jones and Culture Clash, I find myself moving more toward life-affirming performances because I think the world needs it. I think I need it. It’s just too hard sometimes to weather what’s going on in the world without some primordial experience of release, some need to reconnect with each other.”