Moisés Kaufman

MOISÉS KAUFMAN is a Tony and Emmy award-nominated director and playwright. He is perhaps best known for the plays GROSS INDECENCY: THE THREE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE and THE LARAMIE PROJECT, which are among the most performed plays in America over the last decade. GROSS INDECENCY ran more than 600 performances in New York starting in 1997. Kaufman also directed it in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and London’s West End, receiving the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play and Los Angeles’ Garland Award for Best Play, among other honors. THE LARAMIE PROJECT—a play developed by Kaufman and his company Tectonic Theater Project from hundreds of interviews exploring reaction to the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming—opened at The Denver Theater Center in February 2000 and moved to New York in May 2000. TIME Magazine called the play “one of the 10 best plays of 2000” and it was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. In November 2000, the play was performed in Laramie. Kaufman also directed the film adaptation of THE LARAMIE PROJECT for HBO. It received multiple honors, including two Emmy Award nominations, for Best Director and Best Writer. Kaufman’s other credits include directing THE NIGHTINGALE (La Jolla Playhouse) and THE COMMON PURSUIT (Roundabout Theatre Company). He also directed his adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ screenplay ONE ARM and the opera EL GATO CON BOTAS (PUSS IN BOOTS). In 2004 Kaufman directed the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play I AM MY OWN WIFE, earning him an Obie Award for his direction as well as Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel nominations. He was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for directing BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO on Broadway in 2011. Other credits include BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO (Mark Taper Forum); MACBETH (Public Theater); THIS IS HOW IT GOES (Donmar Warehouse); ONE ARM (Steppenwolf Theatre); MASTER CLASS (Berkeley Repertory); and LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN (Williamstown Theater Festival). He is the Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project and a Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting.