Assistant Professor -Acting/Directing M.F.A. Theatre Arts/Directing, University of Iowa Appointed to IU in 2006 ecoopera@indiana.edu Whom do I contact about what?

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe has directed productions of August Wilson’s Piano Lesson and the world premiere of Robert Alexander’s A Preface To The Alien Garden at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI; as well as Yellowman at Curious Theatre in Denver; she has received awards for her direction of The Old Settler at TheatreWorks, Palo Alto (Dean Goodman Award for Excellence) and Water Tower Theatre in Dallas (Best Production, two Best Acting Awards and an Outstanding Direction nomination from the 2003 Rabin awards). In 2006, she received her second Rabin nomination for her direction of Neil LaBute’s This Is How It Goes at Water Tower. Edris’s San Francisco credits include the West Coast premiere of Relativity at the Magic Theatre, Stealin’ Home at Exit Theatre; Crying Holy at Theatre Rhinoceros, and Urban Zulu Mambo with Rhodessa Jones at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. She has additional directing credits at Southern Rep in New Orleans, Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C., the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and Capital Repertory Theater in Albany, New York. 
            She directed and worked in the American Conservatory Theatre’s M.F.A. Program on Robert O’Hara’s An American Ma(u)l  (which she is directing at IU in 2008) and Femi Osofisan’s Who’s Afraid Of Solarin? With the company she founded, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, Edris has produced and directed On The Hills Of Black America and Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish +2 by Keith Adkins; Chain and Late Bus To Mecca by Pearl Cleage; Will He Bop, Will He Drop? by Robert Alexander; and presented three plays by Robert O’Hara—Booty Candy, Living Room and Leigh. She is a long-standing participant in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, an Artistic Associate of The Medea Project: Theatre For Incarcerated Women, and has been head of training for Creative Forces, a performing arts program for high school students in New Orleans. 
            She holds an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Iowa and is an alumna of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. Additional training has included theatre research and performance at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and at Shakespeare & Company in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. She has directed two films, The Green Goddess for Enlightenment Productions and her own independent series of satirical PSAs entitled “The Third Side.” She is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.