FACULTY & STAFF
Paul Zimet
Associate Professor Emeritus
 |
Send E–mail |  |
Office: Theatre 104 |  |
585–3205 |
Paul Zimet is an actor, director, playwright and teacher. Born and raised in New York City, he studied clarinet and voice at the High School of Music and Art, comparative literature at Columbia College and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 1974, he has been the artistic director of The Talking Band, which creates original interdisciplinary works for the theatre. He has written and/or directed numerous works for the company that have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia and South America.
In January 2003, Zimet directed the world premiere of Ellen Maddow's Painted Snake in a Painted Chair at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York City. His direction won a Village Voice OBIE award, and the production received a total of 13 OBIE awards for excellence in Off–Broadway Theatre. His musical–theater work, Star Messengers (composed by Ellen Maddow) was commissioned by the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College. It premiered at Smith in 2000 and subsequently was produced in New York City at La MaMa E.T.C.
A new musical–theater work, written by Maddow and Zimet, The Parrot, premiered at The Flea Theatre in New York in January 2004; Zimet directed The Parrot at Smith College in April 2004. Other musical–theater works include Bitterroot, Party Time (composed by Peter Gordon), Black Milk Quartet (composed by Dan Froot, Gina Leishman, Ellen Maddow and Harry Mann), and The Plumber's Helper (composed by Ellen Maddow). Plays Zimet has written include Daily Drill, Life Simulator, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Lilac and Flag (from novels by John Berger), New Cities, Fata Morgana, A Perfect Life and Baron Bones.
Zimet received the John Lippmann New Frontier Award and the 1999 Frederick Loewe Award in musical theater; a Playwrights' Center National McKnight Fellowship; playwriting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts; a Fulbright Fellowship; and three OBIE awards for his work with the Open Theater and the Winter Project, both directed by Joseph Chaikin.
