Obie Winner & Theater Director Stuart Vaughan Dies at 88

Deadline reports that theater director, Stuart Vaughan, who together with famed producer Joseph Papp, staged several of the New York Shakespeare Festival's inaugural productions featuring such stars as Al Pacino, Colleen Dewhurst, Elizabeth McGovern and Martin Sheen, died of cancer on Tuesday, June 10, at his home in High Bridge, New Jersey. The 88-year-old was survived by his wife, Anne Thompson Vaughan.

Vaughan first teamed with Papp to bring the Shakespeare Festival's first productions to an outdoor amphitheater on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1956, he was hired by Papp to stage both "Julius Caesar" and "The Taming Of The Shrew." The following year, the festival relocated to a temporary stage in Central Park, where Vaughan directed "Two Gentlemen Of Verona," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Macbeth." The productions preceded Papp's Delacorte Theatre which would eventually offer Free Shakespeare In The Park and the festival's permanent complex, the Public Theater.

Vaughan, was the founding director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre as well as other resident companies, including the Phoenix Theatre. In 1987, he helmed Two Gentlemen Of Verona with McGovern, King John with Kevin Conway and Julius Caesar with Al Pacino as Mark Antony and Martin Sheen as Brutus for Papp's 'Shakespeare Marathon.'

He went on to direct several productions off Broadway and for New Jersey Rep and the Riverside Shakespeare Company. He is a recipient of an Obie Award (1958) and a Drama Desk Award.