Mark Brokaw


Robert Mark Brokaw was an American theatre director who won the Drama Desk Award, Obie Award, and Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Director of a Play for How I Learned to Drive.

Background

Robert Mark Brokaw was born on September 13, 1958, in Aledo, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he studied rhetoric, and the Yale School of Drama. He received a Drama League fellowship and was initially given directing work through Carole Rothman and Robyn Goodman, artistic heads of the Second Stage Theatre.

Career

Brokaw directed many off-Broadway productions, and his New York work included premieres by Lynda Barry, Douglas Carter Beane, Neal Bell, Eric Bogosian, Keith Bunin, Charles Busch, Kevin Elyot, Lisa Kron, Lisa Loomer, Kenneth Lonergan, Craig Lucas, Eduardo Machado, Patrick Marber, Robert Schenkkan, Nicky Silver, Paula Vogel, and Wendy Wasserstein. He directed in New York at Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, The New Group, Second Stage Theatre, Lincoln Center, New York Shakespeare Festival/The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre, and the Roundabout Theatre. He spent five seasons with the Young Playwright's Festival. Brokaw was also a member of the Drama Dept. theatre company.
In regional theatre, he directed at the Guthrie, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, South Coast Repertory, Huntington, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the O'Neill Conference, Sundance Theatre Lab, Berkeley Rep, Center Theatre Group, La Jolla Playhouse, and New York Stage and Film. He directed A Little Night Music for the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration in 2002.
On Broadway, he directed Reckless, The Constant Wife, the musical Cry-Baby, After Miss Julie, The Lyons, the musical Cinderella, and Heisenberg.
His work was also seen at London's Donmar Warehouse and the Menier Chocolate Factory, Dublin's Gate Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House.
He directed the film Spinning into Butter starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Beau Bridges, and Miranda Richardson in 2006.
Brokaw's final Broadway production was in 2022, when he directed a revival of How I Learned to Drive.
Brokaw was a past vice president and member of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. He was the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre 2009-17 and was an associate artist of the Roundabout Theatre.

Personal life and death

In 2019, Brokaw married his longtime partner, Andrew Farber; they lived in Manhattan. He died at home from prostate cancer on June 29, 2025, at the age of 66.

Selected works

  • The Rimers of Eldritch
  • The Good Times Are Killing Me
  • As Bees in Honey Drown
  • How I Learned to Drive
  • Racing Demon
  • The Dying Gaul
  • The Glass Menagerie
  • 2.5 Minute Ride
  • This is Our Youth
  • Lobby Hero
  • The Long Christmas Ride Home
  • Reckless
  • Constant Wife
  • POP!
  • The Lyons
  • Cinderella
  • ''Heisenberg''