1940 (85 years ago)

Al Pacino was born on April 25 in New York City. He began his acting career in Boston at Charlie’s Playhouse, performing in two shows during their 1967 season. His big break came in 1968 when he starred in Israel Horovitz’s The Indian Wants the Bronx. Pacino won an Obie for Best Actor and the production ran for 177 performances, including a special trip to Italy to perform at the Festival dei Due Mondi. Pacino made his Broadway debut the following year in Don Petersen’s Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, for which he won the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Though his film career began to take off in the 1970s, with roles like Michael Corleone in The Godfather making him a household name, he continued to take roles onstage for the rest of his career, winning another Tony in 1977 for Best Leading Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. He was nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Play again in 2011 for his work as Shylock in Merchant of Venice.

1950 (75 years ago)

Actor, choreographer, and vaudeville clown Bill Irwin was born April 11 in Santa Monica, California. A triple threat, Irwin has directed, acted, and choreographed several Broadway shows. He received four Tony nominations for his piece Largely, New York  (Best Director of a Play, Best Actor in a Play, and Best Play). He won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his role as George in the 2005 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His most recent Broadway appearance was in Eureka Day at Manhattan Theatre Club. Early in his career, he received several prestigious fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer Fellowship in 1981 and 1983 and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1984. That same year he made history as the first artist to receive the Macarthur Fellowship.

1975 (50 years ago)

On April 15, Action and Killer’s Head by Sam Shepard, the latter starring a young and then-unknown Richard Gere, had their U.S. premiere in a double bill at the American Place Theatre, directed by Nancy Meckler. The same program, directed by Shepard, opened at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco, shortly thereafter. Both plays featured small casts and drew on elements of Theatre of the Absurd, with New York Times critic Clive Barnes noting that the bleakness of Action reminded him “particularly, of Samuel Beckett, with the same kind of nihilistic humanism.”

2000 (25 years ago)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch closed its Off-Broadway run at the Jane Street Theatre on April 9. Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s musical about the genderqueer rock artist from East Germany ran for 857 performances, having opened in February 1998. John Cameron Mitchell wrote the book and starred in the original production, basing the character of Hedwig on a childhood babysitter. It won both the 1998 Obie and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The show premiered on the West End in 2000 and was adapted into a movie, also starring Mitchell, in 2001. The film became a cult classic. Hedwig and the Angry Inch made its Broadway premiere in 2014 starring Neil Patrick Harris. The revival won several Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Leading Actor in a Musical for Harris.   

2020 (5 years)

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Public Theater canceled its Shakespeare in the Park festival for the first time since its inception in 1956. With the spread of coronavirus, April 2020 saw many theatres across the country cancelling whole seasons and scrambling to create virtual options for audiences. The 2020 Shakespeare in the Park season was set to include a production of Richard II directed by Saheem Ali and a musical adaptation of As You Like It by Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery. By April 2021, New York theatres were allowed to reopen if they followed various social distancing and vaccine guidelines, so New Yorkers only had to go without the cherished free theatre festival for one summer; by July 2021 the Bard’s words were gracing the Delacorte Stage once again as Ali got his chance to direct Jocelyn Bioh’s take on Merry Wives of Windsor. (The Delacorte was also closed last summer, 2024, for renovations, and will return this summer with Twelfth Night, also directed by Ali.)