Joanne Gordon

Maria Mayenzet established the Joanne Gordon Graduate Scholarship in Theatre Arts in honor of Dr. Joanne Gordon, retired Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, as a thank you for Dr. Gordon’s inspired mentorship of her students.

Joanne Gordon, Professor Emerita and former Artistic Director of California Repertory Company and Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at CSULB (2004 – 2013) is an award-winning director whose accolades include five Drama-Logue Awards, a Los Angeles Critics Choice Award, Woman in Theatre Red Carpet Award, Long Beach Playhouse Diva Award and being named “Best of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times. Her adaptation and production of Love, Bukowski was nominated for several awards by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, which also conferred on Cal Rep the Polly Warfield Award. In addition, Love, Bukowski was nominated for Best New Play of the Year by the O.C. Weekly. Gordon has directed a number of Stephen Sondheim works worldwide, including the first Chinese language production of West Side Story in Beijing. Published work includes Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook; frequent contributions to The Sondheim Review and Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater of Stephen Sondheimone of the seminal studies of Sondheim’s work. As an internationally renowned Sondheim scholar, Gordon directs and conducts workshops in the U.S., Russia and Europe. Her essay Something Just Broke was included by Oxford University Press in The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies (2013). While internationally renowned for her work on Sondheim and the dramatization of the work of Charles Bukowski, Gordon’s most recent work with Alexandra Billings S/he and me is provoking a great deal of attention and interest. Gordon did her undergraduate work in South Africa and her Ph.D. at UCLA.