ABOUT THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR DEREK GOLDMAN

Dr. Derek Goldman is privileged to be the Founding Artistic Director of the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance, an acclaimed socially and politically engaged nonprofit professional performance company founded in Chicago in 1992, and now based in Chapel Hill. He is also an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Under Dr. Goldman's leadership, StreetSigns has produced forty-six productions, and been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. During its time in Chicago, StreetSigns received numerous Citations for the prestigious Joseph Jefferson Awards and was called by the Chicago Sun-Times "the most exciting company to emerge in Chicago since John Cusack's New Criminals." Dr. Goldman moved the company to North Carolina in 1999, where, according to The Spectator, it immediately earned the reputation as one of North Carolina's "premiere presenters of cutting-edge theatrical works."

Current projects include a new adaptation of Studs Terkel's Heartland Award-Winning book Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith; My Swan: the Passions of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a new jazz-musical being developed in New York in collaboration with recording artist Nancy Harrow around her celebrated song-cycle "Winter Dreams: The Life and Passions of F. Scott Fitzgerald"; and Superheroes in the Doll Corner, a new theatrical work inspired by the writings of kindergarten teacher and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Vivan Gussin Paley.

Dr. Goldman has staged dozens of works professionally, many of which he has also adapted or written. These include his Joseph Jefferson Award-winning adaptation of James Agee's novel A Death in the Family (Chicago Sun-Times, Best of 1995); Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (News & Observer, Best of 2003); James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (WBEZ-FM, Best of 1996); Agee and Walker Evans' classic non-fiction work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Triangle Theatre Award, 2001); Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body; Jerome K. Jerome's classic comedy Three Men in a Boat (Chicago Sun-Times, Best of 1997); the original works Kaddish for Allen Ginsberg (Chicago Sun-Times, Best of 1997) and Behind the Front: A Response to the Ongoing AIDS Epidemic; Wave When You Pass, an original large-scale intergenerational work created by UNC students in collaboration with a diverse group of residents of Chatham County, North Carolina and funded by the Carolina Center for Public Service; selections from Allan Gurganus' collection White People; Isaac Bashevis Singer's Mazel and Shlimazel (a touring show for young audiences); Shelter, a new work commissioned for the International Conference "This House is Home: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Affordable Home Ownership," sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South and the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill; and Leon Forrest's epic novel of African-American life Divine Days, which has been the subject of numerous articles and presentations by Dr. Goldman, as well as his dissertation study, The Politics and Poetics of Adaptation: Leon Forrest's Divine Days, which received the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award from the National Communication Association.

An accomplished playwright, he co-authored the acclaimed historical drama Haymarket Eight (with Jessica Thebus) which premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater and is published by Baker's Plays/Samuel French. He also wrote the play Right as Rain, an original work about Anne Frank and the Holocaust which was commissioned by Facing History and Ourselves and by the Spertus Museum. This play, which he also staged, toured locally and nationally for three years and was a featured part of the Mayor of Boston's Holocaust Memorial Program and of the internationally touring "Anne Frank in the World" exhibit. It has been seen by over 30,000 people.

His other professional directing credits include the recent critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway hit Sholom Aleichem -- Now You're Talking; his Jeff Award-winning Hamlet; the U.S. professional premiere of The Perjured City, or the Awakening of the Furies, Helene Cixous' modern epic Oresteia (Chicago Sun-Times, Best of 1997); an ensemble production of Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; Bertolt Brecht's Antigone; Jody McAulliffe's premiere adaptation of Don DeLillo's Mao II for Theatre Previews at Duke University; Constance Congdon's Tales of the Lost Formicans; As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Tempest by Shakespeare; Anton Chekhov's The Seagull; Wallace Shawn's The Fever; Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind; two productions of Federico Garcia Lorca's The Public; the original hit comedies Night of the Mime, Sitcom, and Lovely Letters; and Samuel Beckett's Rough for Theatre and What Where.

He received his Ph.D in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, where he was mentored by Tony Award-winning directors Frank Galati and Mary Zimmerman, and performance ethnographer Dwight Conquergood. He has delivered keynote presentations, performances and workshops at a number of national and international conferences and meetings, including the annual meetings of the Oral History Association, the National Communication Association, and Performance Studies International, as well as Columbia University's "Thinking and Doing: Performance and Text Conference." He was named one of the "Artists to Watch in the New Millenium" by the Raleigh News and Observer, and one of Chicago's "Best Directors" by Windy City Times. In 2003 he received the Chapman Family Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship as well as a Junior Faculty Development Award. In addition, his projects have received grants from the Joyce Foundation, the Illinois and North Carolina Arts Councils, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the City of Chicago, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Northwestern, the Orange County Arts Commission, and at UNC from the Carolina Center for Public Service, the Center for the Study of the American South, the University Research Council, the Office of Intellectual Life, the Honors Program, the Office of the Provost's Special Fund, and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, where he is a Fellow. His article "What was that Unforgettable Line? Remembrances from the Rubbleheap" was published in the Winter, 2004 issue of South Atlantic Quarterly.

In Chapel Hill, Dr. Goldman conceived and developed StreetSigns' popular "Locally Grown" series dedicated to public concert-style performances of literature from the region's finest writers. Clyde Edgerton, Allan Gurganus, Jill McCorkle, Bland Simpson, Lee Smith, and Thomas Wolfe are among the authors whose work has been presented in this series. A "Locally Grown" performance adapted from Allan Gurganus' essay "A Torrent of Kindness" about the flood of 1999 was presented at the North Carolina Theatre Conference and before the State Legislature as part of North Carolina Arts Day.

Dr. Goldman is co-directing the Center for Performance in Education, with Dr. Madeleine Grumet of the School of Education, working with local teachers to develop curricula that employs performance as a way of studying different subject areas (literature, social studies, science, current events). In addition to creating numerous new courses at the University level, he has continued to work extensively as an artist/educator in a variety of community settings, including museums, housing projects, prisons, senior centers, hospitals, and public schools.