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Guild Hall has announced that award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman will assume the role of President of the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts, with standing president, artist Eric Fischl, stepping down after a long and impactful tenure.
“I am deeply honored to accept the role of President of the Academy of the Arts at Guild Hall,” shared Stroman. “As a director and choreographer, I have long championed the arts, and I am thrilled to continue this legacy by leading Guild Hall’s prestigious Academy. I look forward to collaborating with fellow artists, fostering creativity, and advancing the mission of this cherished cultural institution.”
Past Academy Presidents have included Broadway producer Roy Furman and television executive Ed Bleier. During his tenure, Eric Fischl put forth his vision of supporting the next generation of artists by helping to establish the Guild House Artist-in-Residence program in 2016, for which Academy members serve as nominators and mentors.
In 1985, in recognition of the abundance of visual, literary, and performing artists in the Hamptons, Guild Hall’s Board of Trustees initiated an awards program and honored local luminaries Kurt Vonnegut, Willem De Kooning, and Alan Alda. The following year, the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts was founded by Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Perry, Joseph F. Cullman, III, Peter Jennings, Sydney Gruson, Wilfred Sheed, Elaine Steinbeck, Henry Geldzahler, and Sherrye P. Henry as an association of talented artists and arts professionals who have an affiliation with Guild Hall.
Today, the Academy is an incredible assemblage of internationally recognized artists who advocate Guild Hall’s mission. The Academy’s 250-max members are resources of talent for our programs and for mentoring artists-in-residence and younger artists in the community to extend the region’s legacy as one of the country’s most storied art colonies.
“I have been blessed to be a part of the Guild Hall family, first, as a young artist whom they supported, and then as a board member who supported them,” shared Eric Fischl. “But above all, I was tasked with heading up one of the most remarkable rosters of America’s greatest talents in the creative fields. During my tenure, we have tried to tap into this pool of talent to get them more directly involved with mentoring, workshopping, exhibiting, and lecturing, and to that end, the Academicians have been generous, enthusiastic, and responsive. I am honored to be able to pass the torch to our new President of the Academy, the five-time Tony Award-winning director, producer, and choreographer, Susan Stroman. Gasp, breathe, applause, standing ovation, buckle your seatbelts, we are in for a fantastic ride!”
Guild Hall’s annual Academy of the Arts Awards Dinner will be celebrated in New York City in April 2025. Honorees and new inductees will be announced soon.
Susan Stroman is a five-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer. Her work has also been honored with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, and a record six Astaire Awards. She has two shows onstage this Broadway season – Delia Ephron’s play Left on Tenth and the new musical Smash. She directed and choreographed The Producers, winner of a record-making 12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography. She co-created, directed, and choreographed the Tony Award-winning musical Contact for Lincoln Center Theater, which received an Emmy Award for Live from Lincoln Center. She directed and choreographed the musical The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway and in London’s West End, where it was honored with the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical.
Most recently, Stroman directed and choreographed the critically praised West End revival of Crazy for You and on Broadway, the new musical New York, New York, and POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a new play by Selina Fillinger. Other Broadway credits include Young Frankenstein, Bullets Over Broadway, Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Prince of Broadway, Big Fish, The Music Man, The Frogs, Big, Steel Pier, Picnic, and Crazy for You – winner of the 1992 Tony Award for Best Musical. Off-Broadway credits include the Colman Domingo play Dot, The Beast in the Jungle, Flora the Red Menace, And the World Goes ‘Round, Happiness, and The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville starring Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac. For ten years, she choreographed Madison Square Garden’s annual spectacular A Christmas Carol.
Stroman made her Metropolitan Opera debut directing and choreographing The Merry Widow, starring Renée Fleming. She has created several works for New York City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. She choreographed Larry David’s musical Fatwa! on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and received an Emmy nomination for the HBO presentation Liza: Live from Radio City Music Hall starring Liza Minnelli. In 2017, she received Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in Performing Arts. She has earned an American Choreography Award for her work on the Columbia Pictures film Center Stage. She is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater and an inductee of the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City. https://www.susanstroman.com/
ABOUT GUILD HALL
Guild Hall is the cultural heart of the East End: a museum, performing arts, and education center, founded in 1931. We invite everyone to experience the endless possibilities of the arts: to open minds to what art can be; inspire creativity and conversation; and have fun.
Guild Hall has served four generations and introduced audiences to the most storied artists and performers of our time. As we approach our centennial, we have completed a state-of-the-art renovation to match the caliber of our artistry for twenty-first-century audiences. The facility-wide Capital Improvements Project & Campaign includes top-of the-line physical and technological enhancements to better deliver on our mission as an artist-driven, interdisciplinary institution.
