Kenny Leon to Release New Book DIRECTION, Featuring Foreword By Tom Hanks

Regalo Press will publish Direction: Making the Most of the Performance of Your Life, a candid and inspiring new book from Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon, which will be released on December 1, 2026. Leon shares 21 lessons for living with purpose, courage, authenticity, and connection, drawing on a lifetime spent creating theater, building artistic communities, and bringing landmark stories to audiences around the world.

The book features a foreword by Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks and will be available wherever books are sold. Preorders are available now. (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Direction/Kenny-Leon/9798895653562)

With warmth, humor, and candor, Leon uses the stage as a metaphor for life, offering wisdom that reaches far beyond the theater. Through lessons shaped by triumphs, setbacks, creative breakthroughs, and unexpected encounters, he invites readers to recognize their own power, embrace what makes them unique, and make the most of the performance of their lives.

Throughout the book, Leon turns pivotal moments from rehearsal rooms and his own life into what his collaborators know as “Leon's Lessons.” He recounts encounters and creative partnerships with artists and mentors including Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Kerry Washington, August Wilson, Harry Belafonte, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery. He also celebrates teachers outside the spotlight, among them his grandmother Mamie Wilson Roberts Harris, a Republican neighbor named Buzz, and Mr. Ernest, a longtime janitor at the Alliance Theatre, whose wisdom helped shape his understanding of leadership and humanity.

Part practical guide and part personal reflection, Direction traces Leon's journey from his childhood in rural Tallahassee, Florida, where he was raised by his mother and grandmother in a home without electricity or indoor plumbing, to his emergence as one of the most influential directors in American theater. Leon writes about leaving law school to become an actor, finding his calling as a director, leading Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, helping establish the August Wilson Monologue Competition, and creating productions that expanded what Broadway could look and feel like.

 Leon explores how to turn rejection into fuel, remain present through fear, define and live by core values, create safe spaces, protect what only you can give the world, and become who you want to be by design rather than default. At a moment of deep division and rapid change, Direction argues that the principles that sustain great art can also help people build more meaningful lives and a more connected world.