Lillian Garrett-Groag

Lillian Garrett-Groag, born Liliana C. Groag in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a playwright, theater director, and actress whose work spans Broadway, regional theater, and opera. Her father, of Viennese origin, had left Austria in 1938 following its annexation by Nazi Germany and settled in Argentina. When Garrett-Groag was seven years old, her family relocated again, this time to Montevideo, Uruguay, to escape the dictatorship of Juan Domingo Perón. Her father died in Uruguay seven years after the family's arrival. Garrett-Groag attended Catholic boarding schools in both Argentina and Uruguay before pursuing higher education in the United States and France, studying at Lake Forest College in Chicago and the University of Dijon. She subsequently earned master's and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature from Northwestern University.

During her time at Lake Forest College and Northwestern, Garrett-Groag performed in numerous theatrical productions. A Hollywood talent agent who saw her perform in A Lion in Winter at Northwestern encouraged her to relocate to Los Angeles, where she went on to make guest appearances on several television programs before redirecting her focus toward theater, directing, and playwriting.

Garrett-Groag's Broadway credit came in 1993, when she appeared as part of the ensemble cast of The Kentucky Cycle, which played at the Royale Theatre. The production had previously been staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. For her performance, she received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Performer in 1994.

As a playwright, Garrett-Groag has written works that have been produced across the United States as well as in Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Japan. The Magic Fire, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1997, centers on an immigrant family in Buenos Aires during the Perón regime of the 1950s who seek refuge in art and opera before being compelled to confront the political realities around them. The play was later performed at the Shaw Festival in 2006. To support the development of The Magic Fire, Garrett-Groag received a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays grant. The Ladies of the Camellias is a farce imagining a meeting in Paris in 1897 between theater figures Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, each preparing to perform in separate productions of The Lady of the Camellias on consecutive nights. The White Rose dramatizes the resistance of German university students to Nazi Germany, centering on a young student named Sophie and a police inspector named Mohr. Additional plays include Midons, a comedy with serious undertones about the Troubadours in Provence, produced by The People's Light and Theatre Company in Philadelphia; Menocchio, a comedy about the historical trial of miller Domenico Scandella in the Friuli region in 1600, produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and War Music, a 2009 work based on Christopher Logue's rewriting of Homer's Iliad. She also translated and adapted Blood Wedding from the Spanish of Federico García Lorca for the Guthrie Theater, and adapted The Triumph of Love by Pierre Marivaux from a translation by Frederick Kluck, performed in 2007 by California Shakespeare Theater and San Jose Rep.

As a director, Garrett-Groag has worked extensively in regional theater and opera. Her directing credits at California Shakespeare Theater include Scapin, the Cheat in 1998, The Taming of the Shrew in 2000, Arms and the Man in 2003, The Tempest in 2005, and The Triumph of Love in 2007. She has also directed productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Center Stage in Baltimore, Missouri Rep, the Asolo Repertory Theatre, A.C.T. in San Francisco, and People's Light and Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Her opera directing credits include productions for Virginia Opera, New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Chicago Opera Theatre, Opera San Jose, Boston Lyric Opera, and Cincinnati opera, among others. Notable opera productions she directed for Virginia Opera include Tosca in 1993, La Bohème in 1995, the world premiere of Simón Bolívar in January 1995, Cosi Fan Tutte in 2010, and The Marriage of Figaro in 2013.

Among her additional honors, Garrett-Groag received an AT&T American Plays award for The White Rose and a Theatre Communications Group Playwright in Residence grant for Menocchio at Center Stage in Baltimore.