Mary Zimmerman brings her celebrated play about one of history’s most imaginative minds back to the Goodman nearly three decades after its acclaimed debut.

Leonardo da Vinci strove to know the world equally through artistic and scientific means. This poetic portrayal of one of history’s most imaginative minds returns to the Goodman nearly three decades after it burst onto the stage in a career-catapulting production for adaptor/director Mary Zimmerman. In a production composed entirely of words from his notebooks and various treatises, da Vinci’s ideas on topics from mathematics, anatomy, architecture and engineering, to philosophy, love and the human spirit come to vivid life.

• Mary Zimmerman, Playwright & Director

  Mary Zimmerman is an Artistic Associate of Goodman Theatre, where over the past 25 years she has directed 17 productions including her own adaptations of Candide, The Jungle Book, White Snake, Mirror of the Invisible World, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Journey to the West and The Odyssey as well as directed Wonderful Town, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Trojan Women, Pericles and Silk.  Many of these productions as well as her Arabian Nights, Argonautika, The Secret of the Wings, Treasure Island and Eleven Rooms of Proust have played across the country and internationally. Her adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which originated at Northwestern and Lookingglass Theatre ran on Broadway for year and she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a play.  Opera directing credits include Galileo Galilei at the Goodman (with Philip Glass), Lucia de Lammermoor (Metropolitan Opera, La Scala) and Armida, la Sonnambula, Rsualka (Metropolitan Opera). Zimmerman is a Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and an Ensemble Member at Lookingglass Theatre Company, recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Fellowship and recipient of numerous Jeff Awards.