Joe Salvatore is a director/dramaturg/playwright based in New York City. His play III, about the ménage between George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott, and Monroe Wheeler, was featured as part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival where it received the Fringe’s Overall Excellence Award for Outstanding Play.  His current project open heart, an interview theatre piece about gay male couples living in open, non-monogamous relationships, will have its first workshop performance in September 2009.  Other original plays and performance pieces include You Know, The Class Project, transfigured (with Julie Marie Myatt), and fag/hag (with Kate Nugent).  Recent directing projects include What Can’t Be Seen (workshop), Medea Redux, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Polaroid Stories.  Additional directing work has been seen at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, LAByrinth Theater Company’s Barn Series, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New WORLD Theater, the Del Corazon Festival, INROADS: The Americas, and New York University.  

For a comprehensive list of past artistic projects, click here.

Joe is on the faculty of the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University where he teaches courses in acting, directing, Shakespeare, applied theatre, and theatre pedagogy.  He also directs the program’s Shakespeare Initiative, which includes the touring Shakespeare-to-Go company, the Shakespeare Youth Ensemble, and the Looking for Shakespeare summer youth program. In addition to his academic appointment, Joe also lives in residence at Third Avenue North, where he creates academic, artistic, and social programs for the 1000 residents living in that building.  

Prior 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 has also worked as a consultant for Dance Theater Workshop, youngARTS/New York, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. 

Joe has presented papers and workshops at the Theatre Communications Group National Conference (2009), UNESCO’s World Conference on Arts Education (2006), the American Educational Research Association Conference (2004, 2005, 2007), 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, 2007, 2008), the NEACUHO Conference (2006), and NYC’s Arts in Education Roundtable Face to Face Conference (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). Joe also chaired the 2008 NYU Program in Educational Theatre Forum, "Shakespeare: Page, Stage, Engage," an international conference examining Shakespearean performance and pedagogy in the 21st century. 

Joe’s 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 chapter on teaching Shakespeare will appear in the Routledge Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching (2010).

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 as a Faulty Fellow in Residence in NYU’s Third Avenue North residence hall in the East Village with his cats, Buster and Dusty.