Gina Kaufmann

Gina Kaufmann is a professional theater director and a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Association (SDC), as well as associate professor and chair of the department of Theater at UMass Amherst.  Gina has worked as a director and acting coach in numerous prestigious regional venues, including The Williamstown Theatre Festival and Shakespeare & Company (Lenox).  In New York, she has directed for SoHo Rep, Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art, Wings Theatre, and Dixon Place.  Most recently, she directed The Last Five Years at The Majestic Theater, Luna Gale and Yankee Tavern at New Century Theatre, a musical version of Tartuffe at Shakespeare & Company and Street Scene for Five College Opera.  She has worked extensively on new play development, including three years as a guest director with Paula Vogel and the New Play Festival at Brown University, directing a production of Vogel's own play, Hot 'n' Throbbing at Wellfleet Harbor Actors' Theatre, and four years as the Artistic Director of The Unusual Cabaret in Maine. 

Professor Kaufmann came to UMass Amherst in 2007 after four years in California, where she taught acting and directing at Sacramento State University and directed professionally for Sacramento Theatre Company and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.  Gina was awarded an MFA in Directing from The University of Texas at Austin in 1999.

Productions

• Donny Johns (new musical) by Gina Kaufmann, Harley Erdman & Aaron Jones, currently in development
• Yankee Tavern by Stephen Dietz, New Century Theatre, 2016
• Luna Gale by Rebecca Gilman, New Century Theatre, 2015
• The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, The Majestic Theatre, 2015
• Street Scene by Langston Hughes, Elmer Rice and Kurt Weill, Five College Opera, 2014
• Tartuffe by Molière (musical adaptation by Constance Congdon, Gina Kaufmann and Luke Reed), Shakespeare & Company, 2012
• Marta the Divine by TIrso de Molina, The Siglo de Oro Spanish Theatre Festival at Chamizal National Memorial, 2010

• 1905, Cast-generated, The Misa Table Dance Theatre Collective , 2009
• Private Lives by Noël Coward, Sacramento Theatre Company, 2007
• Tartuffe by Molière, Sacramento Theatre Company, 2005
• The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, 2004 

Courses Recently Taught

• Boris Segal Directing Fellowship
• Joseph and Robert Cornell Family Foundation Grant for development of Donny Johns
• Kurt Weill Foundation Grant for Street Scene

• Triptych Theatre/Fractured Atlas Grant for 1905

• Outstanding Teaching Award for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, 2013