User talk:Barbara Zinn Krieger

Barbara Zinn Krieger is a playwright, educator and theater producer, best known for founding both the Tony Award-winning Vineyard Theatre and the critically acclaimed family theater and arts education organization Making Books Sing.



Early Life

Barbara was born on September 10,1935 in Manhattan, the eldest child of Irving and Gertrude Dimson. She was raised in Brooklyn until the age of thirteen, when her family moved to Queens, where she attended Jamaica High School. At the age of four, she fell in love with theater and music, and knew that it would be her life’s work.

Education

Barbara is a proud graduate of Columbia University School of the Arts, where she received her BFA, and Columbia Teachers College, where she received her MA in Speech and Theatre.

Career

She began her teaching career at Hempstead High School, from 1958-60. After taking time off to become a mother, she resumed teaching in 1965 at the Fiedel School and the High School of Performing Arts in Syosset, Long Island. A friend asked her to teach a class in Creative Dramatics at her library, and that led to invitations to repeat the experience in ten other Long Island communities when her work at the library was written up in the local newspaper. Barbara thus became one of the first teaching artists in the field of theatre.

After a short career on the Cabaret circuit, Barbara founded the Vineyard Theatre in 1981. From 1981 to 2003, she was the Executive Director of that groundbreaking and sometimes controversial theatre company. During her tenure, the Vineyard mounted two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Three Tall Women by Edward Albee and How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, and Avenue Q, which transferred to Broadway in 2003 and won the Tony for Best Musical in 2004.

In 1996, along with Debra Sue Lorenzen, Barbara founded Making Books Sing as the family theater and education arm of the Vineyard Theatre. Barbara had missed working with children and wanted to give them the same quality theatrical experience that the Vineyard gave to adults. She also wanted there to be a strong educational component to the new company, promoting literacy and providing children with the opportunity to learn how to create theatre themselves.

In December 2001, Making Books Sing separated from the Vineyard and became an independent non-profit. Barbara left the Vineyard to work full-time as the Artistic Director there in 2003. The organization promotes children’s literacy and social development through professional theatre productions and arts-in-education programs. Since its inception, Making Books Sing has produced seventeen musical theatre productions for school and family audiences, nine of which have librettos written by Barbara. Making Books Sing is the proud recipient of funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs of New York City, the National Endowment for the Arts and many others.

For her years in education and theatre, Barbara has received the Opera America Distinguished Service Award, and the Arts & Business Council Award for her service as its President for four years.

Personal Life

Barbara was married to Leonard Zinn from 1958- 1975; they have two sons, Arthur and Philip. She is the proud grandmother of Henry and Teddy Zinn. She married Dr. Paul Krieger in 1983, and they currently reside in New York City. Barbara and Paul are active amateur musicians specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music, and avid theater-goers. Barbara is a member of the Visiting Committee of the Musical Instrument Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Helicon Society.

Barbara Zinn Krieger (talk) 16:21, 26 October 2011 (UTC) Barbara Zinn Krieger 16:26, 26 October 2011 (UTC)