Mark Brokaw, a prolific director of Off Broadway, Broadway and regional stage productions who beginning in the 1990s worked with some of the brightest emerging playwrights including Douglas Carter Beane, Kenneth Lonergan, Nicky Silver, Paula Vogel and Lynda Barry, died Sunday, June 29, following a battle with cancer. He was either 66 or 67.
His death was confirmed by the actor Camryn Manheim on social media. “My beautiful friend Mark Brokaw lost his battle with cancer this morning….Today, we lost a beautiful, gifted, beloved friend, artist, husband, and son. The entire theater community is grieving today. I will miss him terribly.”
Raised in Illinois, Brokaw graduated from Yale Drama school and received a fellowship from the Drama League in New York. He soon met Carole Rothman, artistic director of the Second Stage Off Broadway theater, and was hired as her assistant director on Tina Howe’s Costal Disturbances in 1987.
His first solo job, also at Second Stage, was directing Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch in 1988. Also that year he directed Second Stage’s production of Lynda Barry’s The Good Times Are Killing Me, a hit that helped establish Brokaw’s reputation.
Over the next decade Brokaw directed the premieres of some of the most acclaimed plays and playwrights to emerge in the 1990s, including Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth (1996), Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (1997), and Beane’s As Bees in Honey Drown (1997). Brokaw would establish long-standing collaborations with many of his playwrights, later directing Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home and The Batimore Waltz, five plays by Silver including Broadway’s The Lyons, and two Craig Lucas plays Reckless and The Dying Gaul.
In addition to Second Stage, Brokaw directed productions at some of New York’s most cherished Off Broadway theater companies including Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, The New Group, Lincoln Center Theater, New York Shakespeare Festival/The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre.
On Broadway, Brokaw directed Lucas’ Reckless (2004), W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife (2005), the stage musical adaptation of the John Waters film Cry-Baby (2007), Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Strindberg’s After Miss Julie (2009), Silvers’ The Lyons starring Linda Lavin (2012), Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella (2013), Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg (2016) and, most recently, a revival of Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, which reunited the director with Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse 28 years after the play debuted Off Broadway.
Brokaw’s regional credits include productions at the Guthrie, Seattle Rep, Center Theatre Group, Yale Rep, La Jolla, Steppenwolf, Berkeley Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration and the O’Neill Theatre Conference. He directed at London’s Donmar Warehouse and Menier Chocolate Factory, Dublin’s Gate Theatre and the Sydney Opera House.
In 2007 he directed the film Spinning into Butter starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Beau Bridges and Miranda Richardson.
Brokaw was a past vice president and member of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. He was the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre 2009-17 and was an associate artist of the Roundabout Theatre.
In a statement the Drama League said, “Since receiving his fellowship in 1986, Mark remained an integral part of our community—as a mentor, Master Director in our programs, and a board member for a number of years. Recently he joined an alumni committee to support The Directors Project—his generosity was enormous and leaves an incredible legacy. His artistic brilliance shaped countless productions and inspired generations of artists. We are profoundly grateful to him and mourn the loss of a guiding light in our community. He will be deeply missed.”
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
