George Costello Wolfe (born September 23, 1954) is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004. Early life and education Wolfe was born into an African-American family in Frankfort, Kentucky, the son of Anna (née Lindsey), an educator, and Costello Wolfe, a government clerk. He attended an all-black public school (a Rosenwald school) where his mother taught. He is interviewed in the documentary film Rosenwald, discussing his time at the school. After a family move, he began attending the integrated Frankfort public schools. Wolfe attended Frankfort High School where he began to pursue his interest in the theatre arts, and wrote poetry and prose for the school's literary journal. After high school, Wolfe enrolled at Kentucky State University, a historically black college and the alma mater of his parents. Following his first year, he transferred to Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he pursued a BA in theater. Wolfe taught for several years in Los Angeles at the Inner City Cultural Center. He moved to the East Coast and taught in New York City. In 1983, he earned an MFA in dramatic writing and musical theater at New York University. Career In 1977, Wolfe gave C. Bernard Jackson, the executive director of the Inner City Cultural Center in the Los Angeles, the first scene of a play he was working on. Rather than suggest that he finish writing it, Jackson said, "Here's some money, go do it." The name of the play was Tribal Rites, or The Coming of the Great God-bird Nabuku to the Age of Horace Lee Lizer. Wolfe stated in an article he wrote about Jackson for the Los Angeles Times that "this production was perhaps the most crucial to my evolution" as an artist. Among Wolfe's first major offerings—the musical Paradise (1985) and his play The Colored Museum (1986)--were off-Broadway productions that met with mixed reviews. In 1990, however, Wolfe won an Obie Award for a best off-Broadway director for his play Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by Zora Neale Hurston. Wolfe gained a national reputation with his 1991 musical Jelly's Last Jam, a musical about the life