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- Tazewell Thompson (born May 27, 1948), is an African-American theatre director, the former artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse (2006–07) in Westport, Connecticut and the Syracuse Stage (1992–95) in New York state. Prior to that he was an assistant director at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. He is the Director of Opera Studies at Manhattan School of Music. Thompson has directed numerous independent productions, and since 2000, when he directed his first opera, Porgy and Bess for the New York City Opera, has been called on to direct more operas and musicals. His success led to invitations to direct productions of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites for the Glimmerglass Opera and City Opera in 2002 and 2004, respectively, as well as other works. Thompson was nominated for an Emmy in 2006 as Best Director for the televised production of his Porgy and Bess produced at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. In August 2012, he directed Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars (1949) for Glimmerglass Opera, a musical based on the South African classic novel Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. As a playwright, Thompson has also received recognition, with numerous productions of his Constant Star (2002) about the activist Ida B. Wells. His play, Mary T. & Lizzy K., about Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, premiered in Washington, D.C., at Arena Stage in 2013. Jubilee, an a cappella musical that he wrote and directed based on the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, also had its premiere at Arena Stage, in 2019. (en)
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