Elizabeth A. LeCompte

Elizabeth LeCompte was a founding member of The Wooster Group experimental theater company in the 1970s and has been its director since its formal founding in 1980. Under her direction, the group has created over fifty innovative theater, film, and media pieces. These works challenge convention with their structural, technological, and visual experimentation.

LeCompte has lectured and taught at American University, the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University, Connecticut College, the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northeastern University, the O’Neill Center, Smith College, the University of London, and the Yale School of Drama. 

Among her honors, LeCompte has received the National Endowment for the Arts Distinguished Artists Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Cultural Ministry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was A Woman Award. She won the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2016 and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2012.