Who is Jon Jory?

Jon Jory

Born in 1938 Jon Jory is a director who has had a successful career. Since 1969, he has been producing director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville , where he has directed more than 80 plays and produced over 500!! He has also directed at 15 other regional theatres, including The American Conservatory Theatre and the Arena Stage.

Jon Jory has focused particularly on American plays, encouraging the writing and production of new American works. As a result, he developed the Festival of New American Plays in 1976. And his desire to experiment with such works led him to be a founder of the Long Wharf Theatre.

The LWT was founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in the fall of 1964, by Jory and Harlan Kleiman (both former students of Yale School of Drama) The theatre has quite a reputation and has won a number of significant awards, including the Margo Jones Award for production of new works, the Jujamcyn Theaters Award (1986), and a Tony Award in (1978) for the “quality of it’s productions as well as the stability of it organizational structure.”
Jory is also an accomplished playwright and has twice received the Margo Jones award for production of new plays. Hence, it is easy to recognize why Jory himself is such an important part of American Theatre; because of producers/directors like him, America is at last producing and creating it own work that will one day be represented as our own in both the Theatre and literary world.