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Des McAnuff

Two-time Tony Award-winning director Des McAnuff grew up in Canada and moved to NYC in the mid-1970s, co-founding the Dodger Theatre Company and directing their first production "Gimme Shelter" in 1978. His production of "The Death of Von Richthofen as Witnessed From Earth" (1982), complete with special effects like a flying piano, got him tagged a "wunderkind" in Newsweek and convinced La Jolla Playhouse board members to hire him as artistic director. During his tenure at La Jolla, he directed four shows that he eventually brought to Broadway, beginning with "Big River" (1985), Roger Miller's musical version of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and followed by Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods" (1988), "The Who's 'Tommy'" (1993) and the revisal of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (1995). He received his first film credit as director of the "Henry V" theatrical unit for Penny Marshall's "Renaissance Man" (1994) and finally made his feature directorial debut with the 19th Century period piece "Cousin Bette" (1998), adapted from Honore Balzac's novel "La Cousin Bette." McAnuff produced the animated "Iron Giant" (1999) based on the Ted Hughes novel "Iron Giant: A Story in Five Nights" before working on his own live-action/animated feature, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" (2000).