Gabriele Schafer

I am an actor, theater producer and author/translator living in Brooklyn. Born and raised in Germany, I was educated and trained in theatre in the US. I did, however, launch my acting career at age eight, when I played an angel in the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern’s production of the opera Hänsel und Gretel. In 1981, I co-founded with my now husband Nick Fracaro the Jean Genet-inspired Thieves Theatre, which in 1987 procured the rights to produce the world premiere of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial Trash, the City and Death (in my translation) in New York. I, along with Thieves Theatre, were founding members of the RAT Conference (ratconference.com), an international coalition of theater workers dedicated to sharing resources and ways of working, for which I was a lead organizer of in-person conferences in New York, Philadelphia and Rosario, Argentina. I have translated plays from the German, including Oliver Czeslik’s Khadaffi Rocks for the New German Voices series at New York’s Public Theater. In 2007, Thieves was renamed International Culture Lab (ICL ― intlculturelab.org) to more accurately reflect its evolution into a company that collaborates with artists in other countries, including Argentina, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Turkey and the Republic of Georgia. For ICL, I commissioned and translated Outside Inn by Andreas Jungwirth, which was performed in Pittsburgh’s Charity Randall Theatre, New York City’s 59E59 and at Stuttgart, Germany’s Theater Rampe. In 2002, I began to study Butoh, and in 2005 and 2007 was a producer of the CAVE New York Butoh Festival. Beginning in 2016, I produced and directed ICL’s annual Coney Island Ritual Cabaret, a festival of butoh-inspired acts performed at the multi-arts organization Coney Island USA. As an actor, I have performed at Hamburg Germany’s Thalia Theater, Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Yale Repertory Theater, Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre, NYC’s Public Theater, Dixon Place, 78th Street Theatre Lab, in Argentina, New Zealand, Canada and Turkey, and venues ranging from prisons, shantytowns, private apartments to abandoned ruins. In 2015, I began pursuing an on-camera acting career. I hold BAs in Criminal Justice and in Theater from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama. I am a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women.