Peter Glazer is a playwright, director, author, and Emeritus Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Peter Glazer began his theatrical career as an electrician at Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival during the summer of 1972 while a student at Yale University. He continued there every summer until graduating from Yale in 1975, where he majored in Drama and focused on directing, mentored by Nikos Psacharopoulos. He returned to the Public Theater that summer, touring the boroughs with the Mobile Theater, and then closed the historic run of A Chorus Line at the Public before it moved to Broadway. Eager to begin a directing career of his own, he shifted to stage management to get closer to the rehearsal and directing process, joining Actors Equity Association in 1976. Over the next 15 years he observed and supported some of the most celebrated directors and playwrights of the day, including Michael Bennet, Oz Scott, Paul Sills, Emily Mann, Ntozake Shange, Des McAnuff, Lee Breuer, and Ellis Rabb. In 1981, he joined the Manhattan Theater Club as their Production Manager where he helped produce over 20 plays and workshops.
Still eager to further his artistic endeavors, he left MTC to direct professionally for the first time, joining the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), where he remains a member. That first show was a summer tour of the small ensemble musical Pump Boys and Dinettes. Glazer was subsequently hired to direct a commercial production of the show in Chicago, which opened in 1984 and ran for nearly five years, then a Chicago record. This began a long relationship with the Chicago theater community and set the stage for his most successful show.
Woody Guthrie’s American Song, with songs and writings by Guthrie, conceived and adapted by Glazer, with orchestrations and arrangements by Jeff Waxman, premiered at the American Stage Festival in Milford, New Hampshire in 1988, and has seen close to 100 separate productions in the years since. It has garnered many awards in its long life.
In 1996 Glazer returned to academia while continuing his professional career. He earned a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University in 2001 and immediately began his twenty-two-year teaching career at UC Berkeley, from which he retired in early 2024. His book Radical Nostalgia: Spanish Civil War Commemoration in America, based on his dissertation, was published in 2005. Other adaptations and collaborations as a playwright and director include Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War with composer Eric Peltoniemi, O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music with Celtic harper Patrick Ball, Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate with Chicago singer/songwriter Michael Smith, and Foe, his adaptation of Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee’s novel, which had its world premiere at UC Berkeley. He is presently working on an adaptation of Karen Shepard’s historical novel The Celestials.
Glazer is a member of the Governing Board of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA). For 30 years he has helped write, direct, and produce commemorative events celebrating the US anti-fascist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.
Why untold histories?
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I sometimes wonder if I am a playwright/director who favors historical subjects or a historian who uses theater as my medium. My formal training is certainly in theater, but I have always been passionate about history. I came of age in the 1960s when the world was changing around me day by day. My parents were politically engaged progressives who looked to presidents like FDR and the left politics of the 1930s for inspiration. When I was exposed to figures such as Woody Guthrie, the American folk poet, and events such as the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), when volunteers flocked to Spain to try and put down a fascist coup, I was transfixed. The stories were powerful and relevant, and with some theater training already under my belt, bringing these two passions together felt almost automatic. Theater is a community-driven storytelling practice, whatever the subject matter, and these were stories that needed to be told. And they were relatively unfamiliar ones. As a playwright, I want people to experience something unexpected, find themselves inside a story they don’t already know and be transformed by it, if possible. I want the same as an audience member. Lost or marginalized histories seemed a perfect focus.
As for commemoration, theater that recovers lost histories is essentially a commemorative act. It’s taking up a story or an event or a community and saying “look at this – this is important,” the same way a statue might, or a Memorial Day parade, or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
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It didn’t happen all at once. One key moment was coming upon Woody Guthrie’s prose writings in a collection called Born to Win in the old Brentano’s book story on 8th street in Greenwich Village. This was in about 1977 when I was a few years out of college. I was browsing the music section. I knew something about Woody, knew some of his songs, but had no idea he’d filled scores of journals for decades. The moment I read the opening essay, “The People I Owe,” I heard it coming from a stage. It was about the way an artist is inspired by the people they encounter in their lives, and their work is to give back what they’ve gained. “The amount that we owe is all that we have,” Guthrie wrote, “and the only way I could pay back all of you good walkers and talkers was to work.” The show had its world premiere outside of Boston in 1988. The review in the Boston Globe helped me realize what a powerful thing history could be.
The headline for the rave review read: “A Long, Loving Song of America.” Another thread was hearing my father sing songs from the Spanish Civil War in our living room during the. My parents’ friends would go silent and reverent when they heard these songs, or gently hum along, and even as a young teenager I knew something important was happening, that something important had happened. Years later this experience led me to my musical Heart of Spain.
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We need to know what’s come before, especially the stories that for one reason or another have been lost, buried, or fallen from favor. If a story or a moment of history has receded from view, it’s often because another narrative has taken its place, often for ideological reasons. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” wrote Milan Kundera. What happened in Tiananmen Square in China is absent from any official histories. Our present administration here in the US is trying to rewrite history right in front of our eyes - Trump’s executive order requiring schools to “promote patriotic education,” which would necessarily exclude any discussion of white privilege, unconscious bias or transgender issues is a transparent attempt to eliminate the actual history of our country from the education system. That history undercuts the story Trump wants to tell.
Curriculum Vitae
Peter Glazer
Playwright, Director, Educator
prgtheater@gmail.com
EMPLOYMENT
Emeritus Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2024 - present.
Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. July 2004 - 2024.
Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. July 2001 to June 2004.
Director and Playwright for the stage, 1984 – present.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Performance Studies, Northwestern University, 2001.
M.A. in Performance Studies, Northwestern University, 1997.
B.A. in Drama, Yale University, 1975, cum laude, departmental distinction in Drama.
GRANTS, AWARDS, RESIDENCIES
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) – artist residencies to develop and workshop stage adaptation of Karen Shepard’s novel The Celestials, 2016 - 2023.
Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley, Sabbatical Year, 2019-2020.
Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship, National University of Ireland (NUIG), Galway, 2018.
Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship, NUIG, Galway, 2016.
Puffin Foundation Special Grant, $15,000, to support student production of Heart of Spain, and related commemorative events, recognizing the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. UC Berkeley, 2016.
San Francisco Foundation Grant, $3,500, to support TDPS production of Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War and related commemorative events, 2016.
Puffin Foundation Grant in Theater, $2,500, to complete the musical score for Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War, and present the songs in concert at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, March, 2015.
Mellon Project Grant, UC Berkeley. Freedom Beat: National Anthems, Patriot Games, Emblems of Belief – A Musical Performance of Scholarship. The maximum grant was awarded: $32,000. 2012-2013.
Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley, Sabbatical Year, 2012-2013.
Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award Nominations – Best Production of a Musical and Best Director of a Musical, Woody Guthrie’s American Song, Marin Theater Company, Mill Valley, CA. 2010.
Colorado Theater Guild Henry Award Nominations – Outstanding Production of a Musical, Woody Guthrie’s American Song; Outstanding Direction of a Musical, Peter Glazer. Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Boulder, 2008.
Research Assistantship in the Humanities Grant, UC Berkeley. National Anthems: American Songs of Patriotic Contention, 2007 – 2008.
Rockefeller Humanities Foundation Fellowship: “Theorizing Cultural Heritage.” One month residency at Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Washington, DC. Spring, 2007.
Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 2005.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
La Guerra Es Bella de James Neugass (Autor), Peter N. Carroll (Introducción), Peter Glazer (Introducción), Felipe Osanz (Traductor). Global Rhythm Press; Edición: 1. 3 de febrero de 2014.
War is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War, a lost memoir by James Neugass, edited and with an introduction by Peter N. Carroll and Peter Glazer. The New Press, New York, NY. October 2008.
Radical Nostalgia: Commemorating the Spanish Civil War in America. University of Rochester Press, August 2005.
Essays and Articles
“Pete Seeger: Veteran of the Good Fight (1919 – 2014).” Obituary. The Volunteer. March 2014.
“Songs of the Spanish Civil War: The New Edition.” The Volunteer, September, 2014.
“Making History Matter.” The Volunteer. Vol 25, 2, (2008), p. 6.
“‘El Puño en Alto’: El Mundo Escénico Y La Guerra Española, Nueva York, 1936-1939.” In Frente Al Fascismo: Nueva York Y La Guerra Civil Española. Peter N. Carroll y James N. Fernandez, editors. Museo de la Ciudad de Nueva York & NYU Press, 2008.
“‘The Lifted Fist’: Performing the Spanish Civil War, New York City, 1936-1939.” In Facing Fascism: New York & The Spanish Civil War. Peter N. Carroll and James N. Fernandez, editors. New York University Press, 2007.
CDs
“Woody Guthrie’s American Song – Live from the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse” A concert production of the award-winning musical. Double CD set. Peter Glazer, Executive Producer. Released 2014.
“Songs of the Spanish Civil War,” released 2014 by Smithsonian Folkways, SFW40188. This is a high quality reissue of two previous Folkways releases, with extensive liner notes and song annotations by Peter Glazer.
CREATIVE WORK
Video Documentary
150 Years: Remembering North Adams’ Chinese Immigrants. Written, produced and narrated by Peter Glazer; sponsored by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, with the North Adams Historical Society and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. First aired June 13, 2020, 150 years to the day after 75 young Chinese laborers arrived to work in North Adams Massachusetts.
Writing for the Stage
(productions marked with a plus (+) were also directed by Peter Glazer)
+The Celestials by Peter Glazer, based on the novel by Karen Shepard. Workshop held at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA. March 2021.
+The Celestials by Peter Glazer, based on the novel by Karen Shepard. Two readings held at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. February – May, 2020. [NOTE: The final two readings, part of the MASS MoCA performance season, were canceled due to Covid-19].
Woody Guthrie’s American Song conceived and adapted by Peter Glazer, songs and writings by Woody Guthrie.
Silver City Community Theater, Silver City, NM 2025
Mendocino Theater Company, Mendocino, CA 2023 &2024
Skidompha Public Library, Damariscotta, ME 2023
Raven Players, Healdsburg, CA 2022
Arc Stages, Pleasantville, NY, 2022.
Raven Performing Arts Theater, Healdsburg, CA, 2022.
Axiom Repertory Theater, Redding, CA, 2022.
Vashon Repertory Theater, Vashon Island, WA, 2021.
Axiom Repertory Theater, Redding, CA, 2021.
Penobscot Theater Company, Bangor, ME, 2019.
PenArts, Pensacola, FL, 2019.
Palm Beach Dramaworks, Palm Beach FL, 2018.
Company of Fools, Hailey, ID, 2018.
Heritage Theater Festival, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 2017.
Intrepid Theater Company, San Diego, CA, 2016.
Commonweal Theater Company, Lanesboro, MN, 2015.
St. Michael’s Playhouse, Colchester, VT, 2015
Meadville Community Theater, Meadville, PA, 2015
Chenango River Theater, Greene, NY, 2015
Shadowland Stages, Ellenville, NY, 2015
Western Stage, Salinas, CA, 2014.
+Concert Performance, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA, 2014
+UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2012
Camelot Theater, Talent, OR, 2012
+Concert Performance Celebrating Woody Guthrie’s 100th Birthday, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA, 2012
Actors’ Summit, Akron, OH, 2012
Ferndale Rep, Ferndale, CA, 2012
Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, VT, 2011
Iowa Theater Artists Company, Amana, Iowa, 2011
Arizona Stage Co., Tucson and Phoenix, AX, 2011
+Marin Theater Company, Mill Valley, CA, 2009
Stage 3 Theater Company, Sonora, CA, 2009
Vermont Stage Company, Middlebury VT, 2009
Heritage Theater, Grand Rapids, MI, 2009
Theater Three, Dallas, TX, 2009
Blindfaith Theater, Chicago, IL, 2008-9
Ramapo College of New Jersey, Ramapo, NJ, 2009
+20th Anniversary Production, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Boulder, CO, 2008
Vermont Stage Co., Burlington, VT, 2008
White River Valley Players, Rochester, VT, 2008
Elmira College, Elmira, NY, 2008
Stage 3, Sonora, CA, 2008
Willows Theater Company, Concord, CA, 2006
University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2005
Ukiah Players Theater, Ukiah, CA, 2004
Foothill Theater Co., Nevada City, CA, 2004
Southern Appalachian Repertory Theater, Mars Hill, NC, 2004
University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2004
The Sherman Players, Sherman, CT, 2004
Anchorage Community Theater, Anchorage, AK, 2004
Southern Appalachian Repertory Theater, Asheville, NC, 2004
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, 2004
NOTE: 40 additional productions were presented between 1988 and 2004
+The Freight & Salvage Woody Guthrie All Stars produced by Peter Glazer and Suzy Thompson, written and directed by Peter Glazer. Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, April 2018.
Come Dance With Me in Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country, by Patrick Ball and Peter Glazer. Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA, November 22, 2017.
+Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War. Book and Lyrics by Peter Glazer, Music and Lyrics by Eric Bain Peltoniemi. UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Zellerbach Playhouse, 2016.
+Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War. Concert Performance, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA 2015.
+Freedom Beat: Songs of Nation, Songs of Dissent. A performance of scholarship, written, compiled, and narrated by Peter Glazer; music by MAD NOISE, Misner & Smith, Randy Craig. Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, June, 2014.
+Citizen Tom Paxton. Songs by Tom Paxton, conceived by Peter Glazer and Tom Paxton. A musical based on the songs of celebrated songwriter. Writers Retreat, TheaterWorks, Mountainview, CA, 2014.
+The Golden Door, by Melanie O‘Reilly and Peter Glazer, a musical based on the lives of 3 women who came to America from Ireland in the 19th century. Writers Retreat, TheaterWorks, Mountainview, CA, 2006.
+Foe adapted by Peter Glazer from the novel by J. M. Coetzee. World premiere, UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Zellerbach Playhouse, 2004.
Plays in Development
The Celestials, a stage adaptation of the historical novel by Karen Shepard. Artist’s residency with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) Summer 2016, Winter 2017; workshop at Williams College, 2018; public readings, MASS MoCA 2020, 2021.
Come Dance with me in Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country, a musical play written in collaboration with Celtic Harper Patrick Ball. Residency grants, National University of Ireland Galway, June 2016 and May 2018.
Additional Stage Directing
Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2023.
The Late Wedding by Christopher Chen, UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2022.
A Murder of Crows by Mac Wellman. UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2015.
Silence by Harold Pinter and Springtime by María Irene Fornés. UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2009.
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare. UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2008.
Seven Lears by Howard Barker. UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2006.
The Magic Banjo by Michael Miles. Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Milwaukee, WI, 2004.
Marisol by Jose Rivera, UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, 2003.
Commemorative Activities and Performances
150 Years: Remembering North Adams’ Chinese Immigrants, produced, directed and narrated by Peter Glazer. Streamed on the MASS MoCA Facebook page, 150 years to the day after the arrival of 75 Chinese laborers at the Calvin T. Sampson shoe factory. June 13, 2020.
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) Live Online Gala, Facebook Live Event. Co-writer. Featuring Dr. Mona Hannah-Attisha, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Pedro and Luis Pastor, among others. Also featured was the awarding of the 2019 Puffin-ALBA Human Rights Award of $100,000 to No More Deaths/No Más Muertes. May, 2020.
UC Berkeley Commemorates the 80th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. Program Coordinator for a range of commemorative events on the Berkeley campus, including film screening at Pacific Film Archive, archival exhibits at Bancroft Library and The Townsend Center for the Humanities, a poetry reading in collaboration with the Department of English, book talks, seminars, a Human Rights public discussion, Heart of Spain – A Musical of the Spanish Civil War, and the annual gathering of the Bay Ares Friends and Family of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Fall 2016.
This Land is Our Land: Internationalism, Citizenship, Resistance. Co-writer and director. Commemorative event honoring the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and awarding Puffin ALBA Human Rights Award to United We Dream, a national network of youth-led immigrant activist organizations fighting for the rights of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. 77th Annual Celebration. Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, October, 2013.
Despedida Anniversary Commemoration. Performer and co-creator of commemoration remembering celebratory events in 1938 honoring the American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War upon their departure from Spain. King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, 2008.
What They Stood For. Co-writer, director, and keynote speaker for the 71st annual commemoration honoring the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and celebrating the new monument on the Embarcadero on the San Francisco waterfront, dedicated that day. Post Street Theater, Oakland, CA, 2008.
The Lives and Times of the Lincoln Battalion. Director, co-producer, script and media consultant, Calvin Simmons Theater, Oakland, CA and Skirball Center, New York University, 2005
Patriots Act! Co-writer and director for the 67th annual commemoration honoring the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Oakland, CA, and New York, NY, 2004
ADDITIONAL TEACHING
Williams College, Williamstown, MA. Williams Winter Study, “Performing the Novel: The Celestials.” January, 2017.
Central Academy of Drama, Department of Dramatic Literature, Beijing, China. “Adaptations of Shakespeare to the Stage.” Seminar and Workshop, June 22-24, 2012.
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
“‘AIrish’: Exploring Irish Theater and Artificial Intelligence.” UC Berkeley Institute for European Studies. Co-discussant with Catherine Flynn, director of Irish Studies, UC Berkeley. May 25, 2021.
“Freedom Beat: Aesthetics and Poetics of National Anthems in the US, Post-1960s and Post-9/11.” Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP), Pittsburgh, PA, 2011.
“Prestidigitality: The Grain of the Analog, The Gloss of the Digital.” Performance Studies International Conference (PSI), Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2011.
“Left Rights: Premature Anti-Fascists, Progressive Dissents and Legacies of Resistance.” Performance Studies International Conference (PSI), London, England, June, 2006.
“Breathing Memory: Radical Nostalgia and the Spanish Civil War.” Northwestern University, co-sponsored by the Departments of Theater, Performance Studies, and the Chicago Friends of the Lincoln Brigade, March 2006.
“The Skin of the World. The Spanish Civil War: Image/Music/Text.” King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, November 2005.
“Patriot Acts, Commemoration, and the Play of War.” American Theater in Higher Education Conference (ATHE), Toronto, July 2004
“Olivier’s Tears: Art, Research, and Inspiration.” When is Art Research Conference, Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley. Chaired panel on Theater, Dance and Performance Research, February 2004
Event Producer, Curator, or Moderator - Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Isabel Allende, author. Campus visit related to TDPS production of the play The House of the Spirits, adapted from her novel. Ms Allende and playwright Caridad Svich were interviewed by director Michael Moran in front of my lecture class in the auditorium at BAMPFA, and TDPS students and faculty were invited, Spring 2019.
Caridad Svitch, playwright. Residency related to the TDPS production of her play The House of the Spirits. Activities included the event with author Isabel Allende, department visit and talk, and talkback after a performance of The House of the Spirits in Zellerbach Playhouse, Spring 2019.
Mac Wellman, Playwright. Residency related to my production of his play A Murder of Crows, co-sponsored by Department of English, Cal Performances, and Berkeley Arts + Design. Activities included class visits, onstage interview by Carey Perloff, and panel discussion with the performance collective Rude Mechs, moderated by Prof. Lyn Hejinian, 2015.
Joyce Carol Oates, author. I interviewed Ms. Oates on stage in Durham Studio Theater, in conjunction with one of her plays being workshopped by students, Spring 2012.
PROFESSIONAL & COMMUNITY SERVICE
Board of Governors, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), the national organization of scholars, artists, and activists devoted to the preservation and dissemination of the history of the American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. 2001 – present.
Vice-Chair, Board of Directors, Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA, 2018-2019.
Member, Board of Directors, Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music, Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA, 2010-2019.
Member, Board of Directors, Crowded Fire Theater Company, San Francisco, CA 2007-2016.
Chair, Board of Directors, Crowded Fire Theater Company, San Francisco, CA 2011-2015.