Michael Kahn · 2000 Honoree

Michael Kahn is an internationally known director who is adding to Washington’s reputation as a great theater town with his brilliant productions at the Shakespeare Theatre and is putting Capitol Hill on the map too. It is largely thanks to his commitment to the Hill that, although it no longer performs in the Elizabethan theater at the Folger Library, the ShakespeareTheatre’s administrative offices and costume shop are on Eighth Street SE. They will soon be joined there by the new Shakespeare Theatre Academy for Classical Acting, a one year MFA program for twenty students that the company is co-sponsoring with George Washington University. “It’s a wonderful neighborhood,” Michael says. “We never thought of leaving.”

The things Michael likes about theHill are the same things we all appreciate—the architecture, the scale, the gardens, the fact that we can walk to many of the places we want to go. Michael has lived here since coming to Washington thirteen years ago from New York, where he still spends a good deal of time as the director of the Drama Division at the Julliard School and where he grew up (in Brooklyn Heights) and went to college (at Columbia).

But Michael realized early in his career that the kind of plays generally produced on Broadway did not really interest him. He likes Shakespeare and serious classical drama, the plays that are the hallmark of the Shakespeare Theatre here. He finds Washington audiences receptive, curious, enthusiastic; his shows there always sell out.

And now, as the Shakespeare Theatre settles into its new home on Eighth Street and expands its offerings in education and outreach, Michael Kahn feels more than ever that Washington and Capitol Hill in particular is home.