The Drama League | Mixed Reviews | Cinemarati | Rotten Tomatoes | e-mail Gabriel
The Drama League | Mixed Reviews | Cinemarati | Rotten Tomatoes | e-mail Gabriel
Gabriel Shanks has directed over fifty theatrical productions in the U.S. and Europe. His work has been seen in NYC at HERE, Dixon Place, the Red Room, the Present Company Theatorium, the Arthur Seelen Theatre, the Ohio Theatre, CHARAS/El Bohio and Judson House. Other venues include Baltimore Theatre Project, Pussycat Theatre, 14 Karat Cabaret, and AXIS Theatre (Baltimore); Arena Stage, Source Theatre Company, Theatre Conspiracy, DCAC, Tavern Stage, American Stage, and the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, D.C.); OutProud Theatre, 14th Street Playhouse, Horizon Theatre, and 7 Stages (Atlanta); and venues in Dallas, Tampa, Philadelphia, Budapest, and Vienna, among others. He has directed world and regional premieres by noted playwrights Brad Fraser, Theresa Rebeck, Patricia Smith, Frank Blocker, and Charles Busch.
Currently, Gabriel is the Artistic Director of The Razor Prophets, a collective of award-winning theatre artists. He also serves as the Director of The Audience Project for The Drama League, a national arts advocacy organization. A part-time film and theatre critic, his reviews can be seen in print and online at Mixed Reviews and Cinemarati.
For his original jazz drama 3 Stories To The Ground, Gabriel received the 1998 Theatre Project Honor for Outstanding Vision in the Theatre. Other accolades include those for Heaven's Suite, which garnered the award for Outstanding Production of the 1995 Washington Theatre Festival, and his production of Fraser's Poor Super Man, which was chosen as one of the Five Best Theatre Productions of the Year by Baltimore City Paper and the Baltimore Alternative, which also lauded him as Outstanding Director. His sixteen plays have won dozens of awards including the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award and the Southern Young Playwrights Award. In 1994, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington named him as a "New Arts Leader".
Gabriel is the former Artistic Director of NYC's Funkopolis and Theatre Conspiracy in Washington, DC; he received his M.F.A. in Directing from the Experimental Theatre Masters Program at Towson University. Upcoming New York projects include Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Fall of the House of Usher; the national tour of Frank Blocker's Southern Gothic Novel; his own latest playwriting effort, Buckaroo; and Stealing Pears, a work commissioned by Peculiar Works Project for the Don Quixote Festival in May 2004.
