Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alum Anna D. Shapiro ’90, HDR ’15, directs the world premiere of the Broadway-bound new musical The Devil Wears Prada by composer Elton John, lyricist Shaina Taub, and playwright Paul Rudnick. The show, based on Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling 2003 novel and its 2006 film version, will have its world premiere in Chicago at Broadway In Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theatre, located at 24 W. Randolph in Chicago’s Loop, from July 19 through August 21, 2022, prior to its Broadway engagement. This blog previously reported that the show was scheduled to open in Chicago in July of 2020, but the production was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For tickets to the Chicago production, click here.
Anna D. Shapiro
The Devil Wears Prada is Shapiro’s first musical as a director, except for a 1994 concert version of composer William Russo‘s A Cabaret Opera at American Blues Theatre in Chicago. Shapiro, a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble who served as Steppenwolf’s artistic director from 2014 to 2021, won a 2008 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for the 2007 Broadway production August: Osage County. Her subsequent Broadway directing credits include the plays The Motherfucker with the Hat, Of Mice and Men, This Is Our Youth, Fish in the Dark, Straight White Men, Linda Vista, Pass Over, and The Minutes (currently running through July 24).
Shapiro received her BA in 1990 from Columbia College Chicago, where she studied theatre directing from the Theatre Department’s longtime chair Sheldon Patinkin. She then received an honorary Doctorate of Arts from Columbia College when she spoke at the school’s commencement ceremony in 2015.
