David Cromer
Award-winning stage director David Cromer HDR ’17, a former Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department student and faculty member and recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Columbia College, is starting the fall 2017 New York theatre season with two high-profile directing assignments, one Off Broadway and one on.
From left: “The Treasurer” director David Cromer with cast members Peter Friedman, Pun Bandhu, Deanna Dunagan, and Marinda Anderson and playwright Max Posner.
Cromer is directing the world premiere of The Treasurer, a new play by Max Posner that begins performances September 6 at the award-winning Playwrights Horizons Off-Broadway. With a cast headed by Tony Award-winning Chicago actress Deanna Dunagan, the show opens September 26 at the company’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42nd St., in the midtown Manhattan theatre district. The Treasurer, scheduled to run through October 22, chronicles the strained ties between a son and his aging mother. For tickets, call 212-279-4200 or click here.
David Cromer with “The Band’s Visit” cast members Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub.
In October, Cromer will direct the Broadway premiere of The Band’s Visit, a musical by David Yazbek and Ithamar Moses. Cromer directed the show’s Off-Broadway world premiere last season for the Atlantic Theatre Company. The show, which ran November 11, 2016, through January 8, 2017, at the Linda Gross Theatre, concerns an Egyptian police band that arrives in Israel to play a concert. As reported previously in this blog, Cromer won a 2017 Obie Award for his direction of the musical, which also won an Obie Award for Musical Theater as well as the 2017 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical. It begins performances at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St., New York, on October 7, with an official opening slated for November 9. The Broadway cast includes Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub, re-creating their Off-Broadway roles. For tickets, click here.
In between directing gigs, Cromer is also busy as an actor. In 2016, he played the recurring role of Donnie Caan in the Showtime TV series Billions.
Last spring, Cromer was the commencement speaker at the 2017 Columbia College Chicago graduation ceremony for graduating seniors from the Theatre, Dance, Television, Audio Arts and Acoustics, and Creative Arts Therapies departments. You can click here to see a video of his commencement speech.
