Michael Lessac

Michael Lessac
Ad for Lessac's 1968 album "Sleep Faster, We Need the Pillow"
Born	1940 (age 83–84)
Occupation(s)	Director, screenwriter

Michael Lessac (born 1940) is a theatre, television, and film director and screenwriter. Lessac is also the Artistic Director of Colonnades Theatre Lab, Inc and of Colonnades Theatre Lab, South Africa. He is the Project Creator & Director of the international theatre piece, Truth in Translation.^[1]

Career

Lessac started his career in theatre after having received a Ph.D. in developmental and perceptual psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 under the tutelage of Richard Solomon and Henry Gleitman, and was then given a McKnight Fellowship to the Tyronne Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Later Lessac was given a two-year Ford Foundation Grant to work at the national theatres of England, Italy, France, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. He also developed his interest in music and was signed to Columbia Records in 1968 to record an album, Sleep Faster, We Need the Pillow, produced by John Hammond.^[2]

From 1974 to 1984, as founder and artistic director of the Colonnades Theatre Lab in New York City, Lessac produced and directed over thirty productions and maintained and trained a company of eighteen actors, three playwrights, four composers, and a lighting, sound, set design/construction team. The theatre received numerous awards for its work over this period, most notably for its premiere productions of international theatre including original adaptations of the novels of Bulgakov (Molière in Spite of Himself) and