Cecil MacKinnon

Cecil MacKinnon, performer, director and teacher, has performed extensively with theater companies in New York including Shaliko Company, Working Theatre, American Place Theatre, Theatre for a New City, and PS-122. Since 1980, she has been a member of Shakespeare and Company. MacKinnon co-founded the Pickle Family Jugglers, a comedy juggling act that expanded into The Pickle Family Circus.  In 1994, she received the first Citizens' Exchange Council grant to travel to Eastern Europe to research circus in transition.  In 2002, MacKinnon was commissioned by the Virginia Festival to conceive and direct Romeo and Juliet using musicians with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.  Productions she has directed include Twelfth Night, Loves Labours Lost, Comedy of Errors, and most recently, Life is a Dream (which toured to Spain), On the Razzle, and Much Ado About Nothing for the Portland Stage, and this season in New York, a new play, Two Great Oceans.  She is currently arts professor at New York University's Tisch School of Arts. MacKinnon has performed with and created shows for Circus Flora since 1986.  Her most recent success was to conceive and direct The Floating Palace, a collaboration between Circus Flora and The St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall this past January.