Simon Godwin
Theatre director and Artistic Director of Washington, DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company since 2019. He previously held associate-director roles at London’s National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, and Bristol Old Vic, and has directed acclaimed Shakespeare and classical productions in the US and UK.
From Sparse Beginnings, a Community Takes Shape on Stage
Simon Godwin, artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, sees Jonathan Demme’s *Stop Making Sense* as a lesson in making performance visible: a lone performer with a guitar and boombox gradually becomes part of a fully populated, diverse ensemble. For Godwin, that public assembly makes the audience a participant in the creation of a shared world and raises a broader question about America’s capacity to begin with little and make room for greater possibility.
Mark Rothko’s Color Fields Reveal America’s Possibility and Tragedy
Director Simon Godwin argues that Mark Rothko’s abstractions define a vision of America through scale, color and emotional force rather than literal scenery. Recalling his first encounters with Rothko’s paintings in London, Godwin says their “American grandeur” lies in a charged doubleness: beauty and tragedy, outward vastness and inward longing, possibility and loss.