Gian Pietro Calasso is a director, screenwriter, photographer, and
University professor of performing arts. A Florentine by birth, then
also American citizen, he has studied and worked in Italy as well as
England, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, United States, and
Japan.
After completing with honors his classical studies (High School diploma
with highest grades in Italy; Rome University, degree cum laude and
publication) he embarked on specialized studies in the performing arts
at the Drama School of Yale University and at the Actors Studio in New
York.
He completed his apprenticeship as a director, actor, choreographer and
writer with teachers such as Bertolt Brecht, Lee Strasberg, Marcel
Marceau, Alexander Sahkaroff, Akira Kurosawa, Luigi Squarzina, Mario
Monicelli, Franco Zeffirelli and Billy Wilder.
He has written some thirty films and television scripts and has
directed as many works in a wide range of fields: cinema, TV,
legitimate stage, opera, and radio.
He also won two international awards: MystFest for his screenplay
"Covenant with Death", and the prize awarded by Japanese critics as
best director of the year in Japan for his staging of Pirandello's
Henry IV.
He's author of twenty publications on a variety of topics, from Western
avant-garde to classic Japanese theater, cinema, psychology, opera
librettos and short novels.
In the field of photography, he has worked with newspapers and
magazines, has created advertising posters, and is author of a
bilingual (English and Italian) photographic art book entitled:
"Narcissus' Eros", published by Mondadori, Leonardo Arte. The Getty
Museum in Los Angeles purchased two hundred of his photographs. He has
taught "Directing" and "Screenwriting " in five Universities, both in
Italy and USA, e.g. UCLA in Los Angeles, and University Roma 1 "La
Sapienza", in Rome where he is presently under contract to teach
"Digital Directing" and "Screenwriting".
