Anna Shapiro putting it together: her Steppenwolf specialties are actorly insights and new-play savvy.(Profiles)(Interview)(Biography)

Anna Shapiro still remembers what one of her Yale classmates from the early '90s jokingly called her: "The truck-stop waitress who will one day run American theatre."

"I think I was the butchest person in the MFA program, which was also very associated with the idea of what theatre in Chicago was--psychological realism," explains the Windy City-based director, who gave Michael Healey's much-produced The Drawer Boy its U.S. premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2001, and is now preparing for her possible Broadway debut next spring with that show (after ...

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