Tony Taccone
Strong student interest in directing has culminated in two new academic programs at the USC School of Dramatic Arts (SDA) this fall: a minor in directing and a BA emphasis in directing. Supporting these initiatives, Tony Taccone, the longtime artistic director of Berkeley Rep who has a national reputation for innovation and excellence, has moved from adjunct faculty member to full-time assistant professor. He and Stephanie Shroyer, a professor of theatre practice who has taught and directed at SDA for 27 years, are leading these formalized opportunities for students to learn the craft of directing.
The directing emphasis joins existing BA emphasis options in acting, comedy, design and musical theatre.
“There’s a real need for this,” Taccone says. “Directing is at the core of the creative experience.”
SDA was able to attract Taccone after he left Berkeley Rep in a “joyful” parting after 22 years at the helm. “I loved my experience at Berkeley Rep,” he says. “It’s very, very rare when an individual’s ambitions are in sync with an organization. The theatre was growing in a dramatic way, and I ended up with a very fortunate career there.”
During his tenure, Berkeley Rep presented more than 70 world, American and West Coast premieres, and regularly sent productions to New York City and internationally.
Taccone directed new work by acclaimed playwrights, including Tony Kushner, Lemony Snicket, Carrie Fisher, Culture Clash, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones and others. He has directed at The Public Theater in New York City and top regional theatres across the country, collaborating with a long list of theatre luminaries.
Why did he leave Berkeley Rep, despite being asked to stay for another five years?
He left, he says, because he wanted to see what he was like “outside of that job title,” and feeling he could have “one last 10-year sprint of a full creative life.”
He moved to Los Angeles in 2021, where one of his sons lives and where his wife, a lawyer, has close colleagues. He was recruited to teach at SDA by Dean Emily Roxworthy and Associate Dean of Advancement Sara Fousekis, who had worked with Taccone at Berkeley Rep.
He began by teaching the foundational undergraduate directing class for two semesters. Last spring, he mentored individual students and spent time observing the classrooms of other SDA teachers, which he calls “an absolutely fantastic experience.”
“It was a great privilege,” he says. “It was inspiring. There are a lot of good teachers at USC.”
He, Stephanie Shroyer, and lecturers Bob Bailey and Ken Sawyer, who also teach directing classes, met to share ideas about consolidating the directing curriculum. “Stephanie is the central cog in the whole thing, and she’s a fantastic teacher,” says Taccone. “We’ve all borrowed from her syllabus because her syllabus is genius.”
Taccone also reached out to friends at other university theatre training programs, pitching his philosophy of how directing could be taught. “My premise is that a high percentage of what you learn in a lot of programs is about conceptual desires, theories, ruminations and imaginings about a play. And when you get out in the professional world, 90 percent of your time is spent trying to persuade people to move in one direction. So what I’m trying to do is bring a little bit of the reality of the leadership and management that’s required and fold it into the creative process.”
Shroyer concurs that directing is absolutely a hands-on discipline, requiring students to be up and out of their chairs, getting a read on what’s happening in the room. “There’s no way what we’re doing could be taught by AI,” she observes. “Directors bring real human beings together toward an objective, always staying true to the intent of the playwright.”
In addition to teaching directing classes, Shroyer directs one to three productions each year on campus, as well as providing movement direction and choreography on other productions.
Taccone isn’t directing plays on campus because he still is working professionally, threading readings and rehearsals around his teaching schedule.
This fall, he’s directing a play off-Broadway by Ari’el Stachel, Out of Character, that he previously helmed at Berkeley Rep, the Folger and the Berkshire Theatre Group.
He’s developing a play with Jacob Ming-Trent called How Shakespeare Saved My Life that will open at Berkeley Rep this winter, then go to Washington, D.C., and on to New York City.
He’s hopeful that a musical he wrote with actor and writer John Leguizamo, Kiss My Aztec! which had two productions in California and one in Connecticut, will go to New York within a year.
“So there’s a lot going on. Super fun!” Taccone says.
His many professional contacts are already paying dividends for SDA students. For example, Taccone arranged for a student to attend a reading of How Shakespeare Saved My Life in New York City. He also asked David Ivers, a friend and the artistic director at South Coast Rep, to allow a student to sit in on staff meetings so she could have a window on how a professional theatre operates.
Taccone says he will share examples from his experiences when appropriate, but his classroom focus will be firmly on what students are learning. “What’s important is how they are approaching the work, from the imaginative constructs to the text analysis to the collaborative requirements and the communication, leadership skills and management that are required,” he says.
“Basically, being a director appeals to people who like the feeling when their brains are firing on multiple sets of problems at the same time.”
Already, student response to the formalized directing programs has been strong. The four sections of the introductory directing class are full. Also, Taccone says he is encouraged by the number of students applying to be assistant directors on productions. He was warned that there are never enough applicants for those positions, but that wasn’t the case this semester. “There’s a group of students, clearly, who have been waiting for this moment to arrive.”