Playwrights Horizons Founder Robert Moss To Be Awarded Honorary Degree From Ithaca College

Ithaca College will award an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts (D.F.A.) degree to visionary theatrical producer/director/educator Robert Moss. He will be recognized at Ithaca College's 131st Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 17.

The Ithaca College Board of Trustees grants honorary degrees upon recommendation of the faculty, recognizing leaders who represent the ideals embraced by the Ithaca College community and who serve as a mirror of the college's values, mission, and character.

Moss has a record of outstanding public achievement in the arts. Prior to his career as a director and educator, he concluded an active stage management career with the legendary APA Repertory Company, starring Helen Hayes, Rosemary Harris, Donald Moffat, and Nancy Marchand.

In 1971, Moss founded Playwrights Horizons in New York City, one of the most important not-for-profit theatre organizations in the history of theatre in the United States. Committed to championing the voice of new playwrights, during his 10 years as producing director Playwrights Horizons produced works by more than 150 writers, including Wendy Wasserstein, Albert Innaurato, James Lapine, and William Finn.

Moss became the Artistic Director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca in 1982, leading the theatre for 14 seasons before accepting the same position at Syracuse Stage. During his time at the Hangar, he cast Ithaca College students in every summer season and began the Hangar Theatre Lab Company, which continued to offer summer training to students for several decades after his departure.

Moss stepped down from Syracuse Stage in 2007 but continues to pass on his experience and knowledge to new generations of theatre students, including at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School (affiliated with NYU), which renamed one of their venues in his honor as the Robert Moss Theater.

In Ithaca College's Center for Theatre and Dance, Moss taught directing courses for several semesters as a part-time faculty member and sabbatical replacement. He has offered guest artist workshops on storytelling and directed a production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People as part of the mainstage theatre season. He continues to regularly meet with students one on one, and even finds ways to stay in Ithaca on the days he is not teaching so that he can be available.

Moss has served as a board member of numerous theatre organizations and as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His extensive directing credits include such regional theatres as The McCarter and The Old Globe.