Biography

Joe Salvatore is a theatre artist and educator based in Manhattan.  He is on the faculty of the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University where he teaches courses in acting and directing, directs productions for the program, serves as the artistic director of the Shakespeare Initiative, and trains teachers and teaching artists to integrate dramatic activities into the elementary and secondary classroom curricula.  In August 2005, Joe began working with the Office of Residential Education as a Faculty Fellow in Residence in the Third Avenue North residence hall.

Prior to coming to NYU, Joe worked as the Education and Humanities Manager at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Joe has also taught at Barnard College, Long Island University-Brooklyn campus, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  He has been a guest artist/lecturer at Brooklyn College, Washington University, ACTeen, Dublin Youth Theatre, and the Educational Theatre Association.  He has also facilitated professional development workshops on teaching Shakespeare and arts curriculum development for teachers and school administrators throughout New York City.

Joe serves as the Artistic / Education Director for Learning Stages, a non-profit theater company in southern New Jersey, dedicated to providing artistic opportunities for children and young adults.  Joe co-founded this organization, formerly known as the Gloucester County Summer Drama Workshop, in 1991, and served as its artistic director from 1995 through 1998, creating and directing seven productions, including the original group piece, Dashboard Photographs. Joe also works as a curriculum consultant for Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, where he develops curriculum guides for the theatre's school time performance season.

Joe's past directing projects for NYU include Measure for Measure, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Pericles, and 5 X Wilder: Plays from the Seven Deadly Sins Cycle by Thornton Wilder at the historic Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. This project included the New York premiere of Wilder's play In Shakespeare and the Bible. In February 2005, Joe collaborated with Julie Marie Myatt on transfigured at NYU.  The piece examined an incident that occurred in western Massachusetts in May 1999 when two male students at a prestigious prep school carved the word "HOMO" into another student's back for listening to the rock band Queen.  Joe has continued to expand his work on this project to include interactive drama workshops that explore bullying, hazing, and homophobia. transfigured has been presented and discussed at conferences throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Joe also directed mindlynes, an original performance piece inspired by the life and photographs of George Platt Lynes and commissioned by the Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2002.  Other directing credits include two plays by Julie Marie Myatt: August is a Thin Girl for LAByrinth Theater Company's 2002 Barn Series and Cowbird at the 2001 Lincoln Center Directors Lab.  Additional directing work has been seen at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New WORLD Theater in Amherst, the Del Corazon Festival in Chicago, INROADS: The Americas in Miami, Jump-Start Performance Space in San Antonio, Santa Fe Stages, and the University of Massachusetts.  He has also worked as a dramaturg for the Ko International Festival, LAByrinth Theater Company, Pintig Theater Company, and the Culture Project and in the literary departments of the Public Theater / New York Shakespeare Festival, New WORLD Theater, and Foundation Theater. 

In 1999, Joe joined forces with performance partner Kate Nugent to create fag/hag, an original interview theater piece that the duo performed at the AC/DC Festival in St. Louis, the APE Performance Space in Northampton, the University of Connecticut, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival.  Nugent and Salvatore came together again in 2001 to create At Wit's End: You Are Here, a short clown piece that featured two Catholic school girls, Bridget and Tiffney, obsessed with pop culture icons Michael Flatley and Britney Spears respectively.  The piece premiered as part of the Fresh Views series at the 2001 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Joe has written a yet-to-be-performed companion piece called The Britney-Mary Chain that explores Tiffney's continued obsession with Britney and her special relationship with the Virgin Mary.

Joe has presented papers and workshops at UNESCO's World Conference on Arts Education (2006), the American Educational Research Association Conference (2004, 2005), the New York State Theatre Education Association Student Conference (2004, 2006), the University of Delaware's Undergraduate Research Symposium (2004 keynote address), the British Forum on Ethnomusicology Annual Conference (2006), the ATHE/AATE Joint Conference (2003), the AATE Conference (2006), the Missouri State Thespian Festival (2005), the International Thespian Festival (2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006), the NEACUHO Conference (2006), and NYC's Arts in Education Roundtable Face to Face Conference (2003, 2004, 2005). His writing has appeared in Academic Exchange Quarterly, American Theatre, Dramatics, and Teaching Theatre, and in the book The Color of Theatre: Race, Culture, and Contemporary Performance (Continuum Press, 2002).  His play full of grace . . . received the James Baldwin Playwriting Award in 1998, and his play empty was produced at UNC-Charlotte in May 2005 by Twilight Repertory Company.

Joe holds an MFA in Theater (Dramaturgy/Directing) from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an Honors BA in History from the University of Delaware. He is also a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He lives in the East Village with his cats, Buster and Dusty.