Leslie B. Jacobson
Chair of the Department
Professor of Theatre
 
Leslie Jacobson is the Founding Artistic Director of Horizons Theatre, now in its 30th year, and the "longest running" women's theatre in the U.S. She is also the Chair of The Department of Theatre and Dance at The George Washington University. Under her leadership, Horizons has introduced Washington audiences to over 60 new plays and playwrights through fully-staged productions, and another 50 through public staged readings over the years. The Women's Committee of the Dramatists Guild gave Horizons a special award for its outstanding work in producing plays by women playwrights. Jacobson has written and produced over a dozen of her own scripts at Horizons and around the country over the years. She was commissioned to write a musical play, I Want to Tell You with composer Roy Barber, which has been touring high schools and community groups promoting tolerance and combating homophobia among high school students. Her most recent play, The Body Project, co-written by Vanessa Thomas and produced in Fall 2005, explores the obsession contemporary American women and girls have with their physical appearance. As a freelance director, she has worked with several distinguished theatre companies in the D.C. area, as well as with regional theatres in Colorado, Boston, and Atlanta. She has directed a number of world and area premieres focusing on survivors' experiences during and after the Holocaust, including the world premiere of Richard Rashke's play Dear Esther at the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum, and her own adaptation of Peter Sichrovsky's book of interviews with children of survivors living in Vienna and Berlin today, called Strangers in Their Own Land. She has been nominated for the Helen Hayes Award in the category of Outstanding Director three times, and her production of A...My Name Is Alice received a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding production.

Jacobson inaugurated a Women's Leadership Program on Women and International Culture, located on the Mt. Vernon Campus of GW, for Freshmen interested in discovering the ways that women create art differently from men. She also helped to create the one-year intensive MFA program in Classical Acting with the Shakespeare Theatre, called the Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University. She has developed a new course at the University, exploring the contributions made by immigrant- and first-generation Jewish American composers and lyricists in shaping the form and content of 20th century musical theatre on Broadway.

In 2003, Jacobson began a relationship with the impoverished rural township of Winterveldt, South Africa. She has created several music/theatre pieces with at-risk youth in this community, addressing the AIDS crisis, family violence, and other problems confronting these youth and their community. And since 2003, a dozen of these youth have traveled to Washington each January to perform, and to act as informal ambassadors to the D.C. community in general, and The George Washington University community in particular. Their visits have raised awareness of problems facing the new South Africa, funds to support social programs in Winterveldt, and have actively involved GW students. Last summer, Jacobson took two University students with her to create a new play with the Winterveldt youth.

Jacobson was a member of the 2001 Leadership America class, joining 99 other women leaders from around the country; and is a past president of the League of Washington Theatres. She graduated cum laude with a degree in Theatre, from Northwestern University; and with a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from Boston Univeristy.

Horizons Theatre