Richard Maxwell, playwright and director, is the artistic director of New York City Players. He is a two-time Off-Broadway Theater Award ("Obie") winner, receiving his most recent Obie for his direction of early plays by Eugene O'Neill, in collaboration with the Wooster Group. In 2012, Maxwell was also an invited artist in the Whitney Biennial. A resident writer at New Dramatists, he has been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and he is an inaugural Doris Duke artist. His next project, Isolde, will be presented at Theater Basel in September 2013. Maxwell studied acting at Illinois State University and was a co-founder of the Cook County Theater Department, Chicago. His Plays, 1996–2000 is published by Theater Communications Group. In 2013, Maxwell served as a Center dance panelist.