JERRY ZAKS

Jerry Zaks is a four-time Tony Award-winning director of 26 Broadway shows, including such recent productions as “Hello, Dolly!,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “The Music Man.” Born in Germany to Holocaust survivors, he changed his plan to pursue a medical degree after seeing “Wonderful Town” on a blind date while in college at Dartmouth. He began his career as an actor; one of his early roles was Motel in a summer production of “Fiddler on the Roof” with Zero Mostel, who told Zaks’s parents that their son would be “more than all right” in the theatre business.

When Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote about Jerry Zaks’s flair for directing comedy in 1988, he noted that “with Mr. Zaks one can use the word ‘comedy’ in the broadest sense.” That statement is indicative of the wide range of his work.

A founding member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, Zaks began his career as a director with Christopher Durang’s plays, including EST’s production of “Sister Mary Ignatius...” and “Beyond Therapy.” He went on to win Tony Awards for directing John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Six Degrees of Separation,” Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor,” and the 1992 revival of “Guys and Dolls.”

Zaks has received Obie, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, the SDCF “Mr. Abbott” Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre, an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2023.