Blanka Zizka has been co-Artistic Director of The Wilma Theater since 1981. Blanka most recently directed Wajdi Mouawad’s Scorched and Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll which received a combined total of 17 Barrymore Award nominations. Recently she directed Eurydice, the opera Kát’a Kabanová by Leoš Janáček for AVA, Age of Arousal, The Life of Galileo, My Children! My Africa!, Ariel Dorfman’s The Other Side starring Rosemary Harris and John Cullum at Manhattan Theatre Club, Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, the World Premiere of Raw Boys by Dael Orlandersmith, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Barrymore Winner, Best Overall Production and Best Director), the World Premiere of Embarrassments by Laurence Klavan and Polly Pen, and the Philadelphia Premieres of Lillian Groag’s The Magic Fire and Chay Yew’s Red. In 2002 she directed the World Premiere of Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman at Manhattan Theatre Club, McCarter Theatre Center, Long Wharf Theatre, ACT in Seattle, and at The Wilma Theater. She was awarded the first Barrymore Award for Best Direction of a Play for Cartwright’s Road. She directed Jiler and Leslee’s Avenue X (Barrymore Winner, Best Overall Production of a Musical and Best Direction of a Musical), Wright’s Quills (Barrymore Winner, Best Overall Production of a Play), and the East Coast Premiere of The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard (Barrymore Winner, Best Overall Production of a Play and Best Direction of a Play). Her other favorite productions include Orwell’s Animal Farm, O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, Ionesco’s Macbett, Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act and Playland, Dulack’s Incommunicado, Sherman’s When She Danced, Stoppard’s Travesties, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Freed’s The Psychic Life of Savages, Klavan and Pen’s Bed and Sofa, Sherwood’s Spin, Thompson’s Perfect Pie, Carr’s Portia Coughlan and Sherman’s Patience.
