Prolific Broadway and Off-Broadway Director Mark Brokaw Dies at 66

The Drama Desk-, Obie- and Lucille Lortel Award-winning director Mark Brokaw died of cancer on June 29. He was 66.

Born in 1958, Brokaw grew up on a farm in the small town of Aledo, Illinois, where, every year, he would watch the television broadcast of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella—the musical he would eventually direct on Broadway. “I think I always knew I would be a director,” he told The New York Times in 1999, “even when I didn't know what a director did.”

After acting in and directing plays as a student at the University in Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, he enrolled at Yale University's Graduate School of Drama. Following graduation, a fellowship with the Drama League brought him to New York—not the Midwest, where he'd expected to end up—to work as an assistant director at the Second Stage Theater.

In 1988, he directed Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch at Second Stage—his first major work in New York—followed that same year by the hit Lynda Barry’s The Good Times Are Killing Me at the same venue.

He was especially prolific off-Broadway, working with Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, The New Group, Lincoln Center Theater, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre, directing the premieres of dozens of varied works, including Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth (1996), Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive (1997), and plays by Lynda Barry, Douglas Carter Beane, Eric Bogosian, Craig Lucas, Patrick Marber and Wendy Wasserstein, among many others. Devoting more time to Broadway later in his career, he directed Reckless (2004), The Constant Wife (2005), Cry-Baby (2007), After Miss Julie (2009), The Lyons (2012), Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella (2013) and Heisenberg (2016).

Brokaw was a past vice president and member of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and the president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, as well as the artistic director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and an associate artist of the Roundabout Theatre.

In his interview with the Times, Brokaw said, “The theater is not about monetary rewards. It's about the relationships with actors, writers and designers, and growing with them over time—and taking risks with them that you would not have otherwise taken.”

In a statement, the Drama League said, “Since receiving his fellowship in 1986, Mark remained an integral part of our community—as a mentor, Master Director in our programs, and a board member for a number of years. His artistic brilliance shaped countless productions and inspired generations of artists. We are profoundly grateful to him and mourn the loss of a guiding light in our community. He will be deeply missed.”

Brokaw is survived by his husband of 36 years, Andrew Farber.