JOHN FISHER
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF
IN CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD WOLINSKY
John Fisher (Playwright/Director) is now in his seventh year as the Executive Director of The GLAAD Media Award Winning Theatre Rhinoceros. He is also a nationally produced playwright and director. His plays include The Joy of Gay Sex, which was performed in New York City, and Medea: The Musical which was produced on HBO. Recent projects include Ishi: The Last of the Yahi at Theatre Rhino and Red Scare on Sunset at ACT. John is the only two-time winner of the Will Glickman Playwright Award, and a recipient of the NEA Grant, a GLAAD Media Award for Medea: the Musical, two L.A. Weekly Awards, a Garland Award, two Cable Car Awards, a San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award, and ten Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards. John holds a Ph.D. in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and, for the past two years, at the Yale School of Drama. He makes his home in the Haight-Ashbury District with his life-partner Michael. New plays include A Necessary Evil, JFK in WW2 and a musical version of Timon of Athens.
Theatre Rhinoceros, the world's oldest continuously producing professional queer theater, was founded in San Francisco, in August 1977, by the late Allan B. Estes, Jr. Its first play, The West Street Gang by Doric Wilson, was staged in a South of Market leather bar, The Black and Blue. Now in its twenty-ninth year, Theatre Rhinoceros remains committed to Allan Estes’ original vision of developing and producing works of theatre that enlighten, enrich, and explore both the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of our queer community.
