Tony-winning director, writer, and professor Mel Shapiro passed away December 23. News of his passing was confirmed by his family. He was 89.

An open-hearted and empathetically curious artist, Mr. Shapiro trained at Carnegie-Mellon University before embarking on a regional directing career. Working first at the Pittsburgh Playhouse before becoming the resident director at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Mr. Shapiro was resistant to settling down in any one place: His credits swung across the map of North America, working as a co-producing director at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, as a guest director at Connecticut's Hartford Stage Company, and as a visiting director for the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.

While the majority of his work was within the bounds of the United States, he also enjoyed an extensive working relationship with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. Mr. Shapiro's sensitivity to comedic timing and language made him a natural fit for Shakespeare's works, leading to his most popular project: a musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Directed by Mr. Shapiro, the musical was also co-written by him alongside John Guare, with composer Galt MacDermot. The adaptation was an unexpected hit, winning the 1972 Tony Award for Best Musical, as well as Guare and Mr. Shapiro sharing the Best Book of a Musical win. The production, which utilized lighthearted comedy as a gossamer shade over social commentary, starred Clifton Davis and Raúl Julia as the titular Gentlemen, catapulting the pair into significantly higher stardom. Mr. Shapiro and Guare also collaborated on the original staging of Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play in 1971.

Mr. Shapiro would only work on two other Broadway shows: the 1978 revival of Stop the World - I Want to Get Off with Sammy Davis Jr., and the Broadway run of Guare's 1979 play Bosoms and Neglect. Elsewhere in New York, he staged shows for Lincoln Center, including Václav Havel's The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, which won an Obie Award, and Shakespeare's Richard III. 

His six-year working relationship with Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater was legendary, with some of his most popular productions including Guare's Rich and Famous, Marco Polo Sings a Solo, and John Ford Noonan's Older People.

As a writer off the stage, Mr. Shapiro wrote two of the most popular books in the theatre industry: The Director's Companion and An Actor Performs. Both texts are frequently given to directors and actors at the beginning of their careers, with many referring to Mr. Shapiro's text as their "artistic bible."

Mr. Shapiro was a prolific teacher as well, serving as one of the founding members of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and as the head of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. He was the head of graduate acting for the Theatre Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, taught and directed at the Queensland University of Technology's Theatre School in Brisbane, Australia, and at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia.

Information on a public memorial is forthcoming.