Louis Rackoff

Department Chair, Associate Professor

B.A., Queens College, CUNY
M.F.A., University of Wisconsin, Madison

Louis Rackoff was the Artistic Director of the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival from 1988 to 2002, where he supervised or directed more than 60 productions. His most recent directing for NCSF included: Shakespeare's "King Henry V", "Much Ado About Nothing", and "The Tempest"; Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters"; and Lou's original adaptation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".

Lou has been a guest director for more than 50 productions at numerous professional theaters and universities throughout the country and worked as a production stage manager for the New York Shakespeare Festival 1974-1981, where he directed a national tour of the Broadway production of "The Pirates of Penzance".

Lou was an assistant professor of Theatre at Fordham University at Lincoln Center, and was a visiting guest artist with the Southern Miss Department of Theatre and Dance for 2004-2005. He joined the full-time faculty at Southern Miss in July 2005 and serves as the chair of the department and head of the Master of Fine Arts directing program.

Directing projects for the department: "Much Ado About Nothing", "An Enemy of the People", "A Lesson From Aloes”, “Twelfth Night”, "The Cherry Orchard", “Pride and Prejudice”, and “The Learned Ladies”. Southern Arena Theatre: "Shakespeare in Hollywood”, "An Inspector Calls", “The Comedy of Errors”.