Susan Stroman | Biography, Choreography, Plays, Awards, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)
Susan Stroman (born October 17, 1954, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.) is an American director and choreographer who amassed numerous Tony Awards and other honours for her innovative work in musical theatre.
Stroman grew up in a home in which music was prized. She loved watching Fred Astaire movies and later admitted that, even when she was very young, she visualized dance when she heard music; she began attending dance classes at age five. Stroman got some choreographing experience in local theatres during her high-school years and while she was a student at the University of Delaware. In 1977, a year after graduation, she headed for New York City to pursue a career as a choreographer.
Knowing that she would need to have some practical credentials before she could break into choreographing professionally, Stroman secured work in several shows and in 1980 became assistant director, assistant choreographer, and dance captain of a little-known show, Musical Chairs. In 1987, after spending several years at small choreographing jobs, she and a member of that show’s cast, Scott Ellis, collaborated on an Off-Broadway revival of Flora, the Red Menace. It became a cult sensation and ultimately led to further work for the pair on such shows as the New York City Opera’s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1989) and the John Kander and Fred Ebb revue And the World Goes ’Round (1991). For the latter, Stroman won her first Outer Critics Circle Award for choreography.
These were only the first of Stroman’s successes, however. In 1992 she choreographed Crazy for You, a musical featuring the work of George and Ira Gershwin, and took Broadway by storm, winning Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and later—for the London production—Olivier awards. She also won prestigious honours for Show Boat (1994), the London revival of Oklahoma! (1998), Contact (1999)—a show that told three separate stories almost entirely through dance—and a revival of The Music Man (2000). In addition to her work in musical theatre, Stroman counted among her credits such ballets as But Not for Me (1998), for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Blossom Got Kissed (1999) as well as Double Feature: The Blue Necklace and Makin’ Whoopee (2004), for the New York City Ballet. She also choreographed for film and television.
Stroman’s husband, Crazy for You director Mike Ockrent, was to have been director of The Producers, with Stroman as choreographer, but when he died in 1999 Stroman took over the directorship as well. The show opened in 2001 and won a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards. She then directed a film version of The Producers in 2005. Stroman repeated her dual role as director and choreographer in Thou Shalt Not (2001–02), a musical version of Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, as well as in The Frogs (2004), a musical adaptation of the play by Aristophanes; Young Frankenstein (2007), which was written and produced by Mel Brooks; The Scottsboro Boys, a musical set in 1930s rural Alabama that tells the story of a group of African American young men wrongfully accused of attacking two white women (2010); Big Fish (2013), adapted from the fantastical 2003 Tim Burton film; and Bullets over Broadway (2014), a stage adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1994 movie. She also codirected and choreographed Prince of Broadway (2017), a revue celebrating the career of theatrical producer and director Harold Prince. Stroman’s later work included The Beast in the Jungle (2018).