John Ahart

John Ahart has had a long and distinguished career in the American theatre. "A Different Direction" is the product of his forty-one years of experience as director, playwright, designer, and teacher. At the University of Illinois he supervised the graduate directors' workshop and later headed the MFA directing program for much of his thirty-two-year tenure, directing a wide range of major works at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Since his retirement, he has resided in Southern...See more

John Ahart has had a long and distinguished career in the American theatre. "A Different Direction" is the product of his forty-one years of experience as director, playwright, designer, and teacher. At the University of Illinois he supervised the graduate directors' workshop and later headed the MFA directing program for much of his thirty-two-year tenure, directing a wide range of major works at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Since his retirement, he has resided in Southern California, where he has devoted his time to writing. "A Different Direction" brings together Ahart's insight gained through four decades of practical experience creating original works, directing theatre classics, using and developing nontraditional theatre spaces, and building and sustaining a theatre company that gave voice to Americans, spanning 160 years of our history. Ahart holds a BA from Marietta College, an MA from the University of Illinois, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. See less