Eugene Lion

[1] In 1978 he directed their production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which was praised as "a powerful, unfussy presentation, masterly in its groupings and getting from a dedicated cast acting of unusual strength and intensity.

Its resident repertory company, which included John Pielmeier, its apprentice program and its international network of alternative theatres came to an end when Lion's tenure was terminated by its parent, The Guthrie Theater, which lead to a lawsuit and an acrimonious parting of ways.

Lion then became artistic director of the Hawaii Public Theater (1977–79), where he directed Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade (1978), Jean Genet's The Maids, in two versions (1978) and Alexander Ostrovsky 's The Fools!

Off-Broadway in the 60's, he directed Jaques Audiberti 's The Chinabird, Michel de Ghelderode's Women at the Tomb and Escurial, Robert Hellman's Kling, and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw; in Berlin, he directed Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann and Arturo Ui at the Berliner Ensemble (1969).

In 1968, the Lutheran Film Associates (LFA) produced a feature-length documentary, entitled Acts, about Eugene Lion and Rev.

In 1986 the work shifted to producing and touring one-woman multidisciplinary shows written and directed by Lion and performed by Lechay.

His workshops and private coaching influenced artists of many disciplines: actors, dancers, vocal and instrumental musicians, painters and designers, including François Cervantes, director of the theatre company L'Entreprise, in Marseille, France, who is preparing a book on Lion's technique.

Lion was on the faculty of the University of Iowa Theatre Department and the Center for New Performing Arts (1972–75), where he directed an Elizabethan play, Woodstock, also called I Richard II, on roller skates (1973).

Lion's produced translations and adaptations are Betti's The Burnt Flowerbed and Queen and the Rebels, Frisch's The Firebugs, Genet's The Maids, Ghelderode's Christopher Columbus and Women at the Tomb, as well as Ostrovsky's Fools!.

Peter Barnes's Laughter (1978), Joan Schenkar's The Last of Hitler (1982), Roy Kift's Camp Comedy (1996), and Eugene Lion's Sammy's Follies (2006) all use humor to make the performances of their plays more transgressive of conventional theatrical forms and ethical assumptions.

"[10] Lion, however, insisted that Sammy's Follies was not about Auschwitz or the Holocaust; the reference is a metaphor for our indifference to current and ongoing atrocities.