George Coates (born March 19, 1952) is an American theater director most notable for his work with George Coates Performance Works (GCPW), which he founded in 1977 in San Francisco, CA. The company produced over 20 multi-media live performances over a span of 25 years, winning a multitude of awards for its international performances, earning critical acclaim in Asia, Europe and South America and gaining North American attention at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. In the 1990s, he was the first to merge live performers within stage environments created by computer generated graphics in real time live theater. Coates became known as a pioneer of experimental live theater using stereographic projections and 3-D glasses populated by live actors and musicians. Early life George Coates was born in Philadelphia in 1952 and spent his childhood in New Jersey and later Rhode Island. His father was an Irish Catholic rotogravure operator at the Providence Journal. In 1969, at the age of 17, Coates hitched a ride to California and eventually settled in Berkeley. Coates auditioned for and was cast in numerous productions at the University of California, Berkeley theater department as an unregistered student. He then traveled to New York where he signed a year contract with the National Shakespeare Company, touring the country in character roles in "As You Like It," "Julius Caesar" and George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan." When the contract ended, Coates returned to Berkeley, where he joined the Berkeley Stage Company and later the experimental theater group the Blake Street Hawkeyes, where he became fascinated by improvisation and the ensemble. Early work In 1976, Coates began creating original works with performers including movement artists, opera and gospel singers presented non-traditional formats in a theatrical context. His first major piece, 2019 Blake, was the story of a performer who can't keep a linear train of thought, performed by mime Leonard Pitt with a few props. His next one-man show, Duykers The First, featured operatic tenor John Duykers. The Way of How, performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1983, included the same performers, operatic tenor Rinde Eckhert, and a real time analog sound processing system invented by composer Paul Dresher that created the sound of an ensemble playing when a performer laid down multiple tracks on a tape loop. Notable work Coates' Rare Area was seen by 35,000 people in a sold-out, three-month run