Joe Calarco is the adapter/director of Shakespeare's R&J, which ran more than a year in New York City and earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. It has had a successful run on the West End of London at the Arts Theatre this fall for which Joe received an honorable mention from the Evening Standard Awards committee, and the production went on to tour the U.K. He also directed the play's premieres in Chicago (5 Jeff Award nominations including Best Play and Best Director) and Washington, D.C. (Helen Hayes Award nominations for Best Play and Best Director). Other productions include the critically acclaimed world premiere of the musical Sarah, Plain and Tall and Julia Jordan's The Summer of the Swans both at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York. Joe is an Artistic Associate at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, where he directed William Finn's Elegies: A Song Cycle, the world premiere of Norman Allen's Nijinsky's Last Dance (4 Helen Hayes Awards including Best Play and Best Director), Side Show (4 Helen Hayes Awards including Best Musical and Best Director), and the world premiere of his own play in the absence of spring which premiered in New York at Second Stage under his own direction. His production of The Last Five Years for the Philadelphia Theatre Company earned him a Barrymore Award nomination as Best Director and the show won for Best Musical. He will return to that theatre to direct Take Me Out next spring. He has over a dozen regional theatre directing credits as well. One of New York Theatre Workshop's "usual suspects," Joe is a Drama League directing fellow and served as resident playwright at Expanded Arts, Inc. for two years. He was named a Joseph Papp artist in residence at Second Stage and is a graduate of Ithaca College.

Recent credits include Urinetown at Signature Theatre in Virginia, winner of eight Helen Hayes Awards, Twice Charmed for Disney, Lincolnesque at The Old Globe, as well as the Los Angeles and Japanese productions of R&J. In addition to the commercial production of Enid Rudd's Dearest Cousin, Joe's upcoming projects include Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky for Playwrights Horizons. More information on Joe can be found at http://www.joecalarco.net/.