Joan MacIntosh, Professor in the Practice of Acting, David Geffen School of Drama, and Theatre Dance and Performance Studies of Yale College has had an acclaimed career as an actress in the professional American theatre for 57 years. She has performed many leading roles on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in Resident Theaters across the U.S. and in the UK, Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea, and Japan. She has been teaching acting in universities and in workshops in New York, the U.S., and throughout the world for as long as she has been acting.
As an actress Joan has worked with some of the finest theater artists living today. In 1967, she co-founded the internationally celebrated experimental theatre company, The Performance Group, along with Richard Schechner. While with the group, Ms. MacIntosh won OBIES for Dionysus in 69, The Tooth of Crime, and one for Distinguished Performance in Commune. She played a Dark Power in their production of Makbeth, Jocasta in Seneca’s Oedipus, and Mother Courage in Mother Courage and her Children, which performed at The Performing Garage, their theater in Soho, NY, and also toured throughout India. Broadway: Orpheus Descending (Sir Peter Hall, Vanessa Redrave); The Seagull, National Actors’ Theatre; Our Town and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (Sam Waterston), both for Lincoln Center Theater. New York Shakespeare Festival: The Bacchae directed by JoAnne Akalaitis with music by Philip Glass; Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 8, & 9, directed by Jo Bonney; 365 Days/365 Plays, directed by Michael Greif, both plays by and with Suzan-Lori Parks; Macbeth, (Liev Schreiber); All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Richard Jones; Julius Caesar (Al Pacino, Martin Sheen); Cymbeline, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis; A Bright Room Called Day, written by Tony Kushner, directed by Michael Greif; Three Acts of Recognition, directed by Richard Foreman; Dispatches and Alice in Concert (Meryl Streep), both directed by Liz Swados. New York Theatre Workshop: The Misanthrope, Alice in Bed, More Stately Mansions, and A Streetcar Named Desire (assistant director) all with Ivo van Hove, winning an OBIE for Sustained Excellence of Performance, and both the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance and the Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel Award for Distinguished Performance for More Stately Mansions. Joan won the Drama Desk Award for her solitary performance in Request Concert, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis at The Women’s Interart Theatre in NY; and the 2007 Elliot Norton Award for her work in Britannicus, directed by Robert Woodruff at Harvard’s A.R.T. She also collaborated with Mr. Woodruff on Edward Bond’s Chair at Theatre for a New Audience in New York and performed in his production of In a Year With 13 Moons at Yale Repertory Theatre, where she also performed in Liz Diamond’s production of Happy Now?. She performed the role of Hamlet in Annie Dorsen’s A Piece of Work at BAM and on tour in Norway and in Athens, Greece; performed in Deborah Kampmeier’s film, Split; and in the Lake Lucille Project’s film of The Seagull in 2014.
During the fall, Ms. MacIntosh teaches You are the creator for the third-year actors of DGSD, and directs second and third- year DGSD actors in the Fall Project, for which she has directed, Vieux Carre, Platonov, in a new translation that she collaborated on with dramaturg Ilya Khodosh, (DRA’14) Fucking A, by Suzan-Lori Parks, Checkov’s The Three Sisters, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard, Sweat, by Lynn Nottage, Reykjavik by Steve Yockey, Grand Concourse, by Heidi Schreck, and What of the Night?, by Maria Irene Fornes.
Formerly, as director of the Spring Project at DGSD, she directed Carol Rocamora’s Rubles, a collection of Chekhov short stories, Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul, Tom Stopppard’s Arcadia, Caryl Churchill’s Fen, and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park. During the spring semester Ms. MacIntosh teaches Intermediate Acting and American Avant Garde Theatre of the 1960’s and 70’s for the Yale College Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Program. She has also directed The Three Sisters at California Institute of the Arts, and Macbeth and Twelfth Night at the Stella Adler Studio.
Grants include: JDR 3rd Fund for travel and study in India and Southeast Asia; USIA grant for travel and study in India, Southeast Asia and South Africa; ITI grant for travel to Eastern Europe; and Spencer Cherashore Grant for her writing of O Beloved! A Presence. Ms. MacIntosh is a Fox Fellow and a proud member of The Actor’s Center. She is currently writing a book about her experiences in the experimental theatre with The Performance Group, 1967-78.
