Robert Hedley

Robert Hedley is the former chairperson of the Theater Department and a former chairperson at Villanova University and the University of Iowa. He has long been associated with the development of new plays. A former Director of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, he co-founded Philadelphia Theater Company and West Coast Playwrights. He was a master teacher at Bay Area Playwrights Festival, served as a playwrights’ mentor at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. and has been a guest speaker on new writing at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. In 2012 he was awarded a writing residency at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy. His recent article, with wife Harriet Power, on British new writing, may be read in American Theatre Magazine. Among former writing students are David Rabe, Leslie Lee, Rebecca Gilman, Naomi Wallace, Charles Smith, David Hancock, Heather McCutchen, Clay Goss, Shem Bitterman and Sean Clark. He has directed professionally in Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco. He was Artistic Director of the Iowa Shakespeare Festival; a founding member and program Director of the Avenue of the Arts, Philadelphia; President of the Conference of Big Ten Chairpersons; Advisor, International Center for Theatre Studies in Belgium; a moderator for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ theatre initiatives; Consultant to the City of Philadelphia’s Historic Commission; workshop leader in Acting and Directing for The Actors and Directors Conservatory in Yugoslavia; creator and director of Theatre in the Court (Shakespeare in City Hall); and sponsor of Center City Soap, a live daily. He has been the Provost’s Arts Fellow at Temple, was chosen for the Alumni Award of Excellence from the University of Alberta, and has been awarded the Barrymore Lifetime Achievement Award.