Olympia Dukakis, Bill Irwin & Carey Perloff Set for 'Why Theater Matters' Panel at 92Y, 4/1

A panel of theater's great advocates and innovators-Carey Perloff, artistic director of San Francisco's legendary American Conservatory Theater, whose new book is Beautiful Chaos; the multiple award-winning actor, director and producer Olympia Dukakis; and Bill Irwin (who won a Tony Award for his appearance as George in the revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and received the first ever New Victory Arts Award for "bringing the arts to kids and the kids to arts")-join former New York Times theater critic Margo Jefferson for an evening of enlightened and inspiring discussion about why theater matters and how theater fits into today's tech-infused world.

Carey Perloff's theater career launched when she was 27 at New York's Classic Stage Company, where she staged the American premieres of Harold Pinter's Mountain Language, Tony Harrison's Phaedra Britannicus and the world premiere of Ezra Pound's Elektra. Perloff was the youngest person ever to be hired to run a major LORT theater when A.C.T. chose her in 1992 to become its third Artistic Director. In her twenty-plus years since, she's had deep collaborations with writers Tom Stoppard, Philip Gotanda, Robert Wilson, Frank Galati and Timberlake Wertenbaker, and with the great actors Bill Irwin, David Strathairn and Olympia Dukakis, among many others. Perloff has written a number of award-winning plays, as well. She has now embarked upon a new theater in San Francisco's mid-Market called The Strand as a second stage for ACT. Her memoir, Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater, was published earlier this year.

Olympia Dukakis is a veteran actor of stage, cinema and television having performed in over 130 productions on and off-Broadway and at regional theatres around the U.S., as well as internationally. Dukakis received an Obie Award for The Marriage of Bette and Boo and A Man's a Man, and was an Academy Award-winner and a Golden Globe Award-winner for her performance in the film Moonstruck. Dukakis is a founding member of the Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ and has been their Producing Artistic Director for 19 years. She taught acting at NYU's graduate program for fourteen years and currently teaches master classes for colleges and universities across the country. Dukakis received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Greek America Foundation and the Elliot Norton Awards, was bestowed with the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.

Bill Irwin was an original member of Kraken and of San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus. His original works include Fool Moon, The Regard of Flight and Old Hats. Amongst other productions, Irwin has appeared in Scapin, Endgame and The Goat or Who is Sylvia. He received a Drama Desk Nomination in 2009 for the Roundabout Theater Company's production of Waiting for Godot and a Tony Award and Helen Hayes Award in 2005 for the Broadway/West End revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. A frequent performer in film and television, Irwin has received a National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer's Fellowship, a Guggenheim, a Fulbright and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Margo Jefferson is a former theatre critic for The New York Times, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. She teaches writing at Columbia University and the Eugene Lang College at The New School.