WYNN PLACE SHOW is part oral history of one of the most influential off-Broadway theaters of the last half-century and part theater history of that seminal time in the development of a distinctive American theater. At the center is Wynn Handman ,  co-founder and artistic director of The American Place Theatre, which produced the work of American poets Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and William Alfred as well as early plays by Sam Shepard , Ronald Ribman, Ed Bullins, Steve Tesich, Maria Irene Fornes and Eric Bogosian . Stars who studied with him or appeared in APT productions include Myrna Loy , Dustin Hoffman,  Faye Dunaway , Frank Langella, Michael Douglas , Joel Grey, Morgan Freeman, Roscoe Lee Browne, Marian Seldes, Richard Gere , Bill Irwin, Olympia Dukakis and  John Leguizamo , who contributed the foreword to the book. Wynn Place Show includes rare photographs of those stars by Life magazine staff photographer Martha Holmes, who began shooting the company from its inception at a church on far West 46th Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. "In this overdue biography of an outstanding teacher and an adventurous company, Mr. Gerard, a former Broadway reporter for The New York Times, engagingly recounts Mr. Handman's long and storied career `as a force against mediocrity and complacency.'" -- The New York Times, 2/21/2014 Jeremy Gerard, Executive Editor and Chief Drama Critic at Deadline.com, has written about the lively arts since 1975 as Broadway reporter for The New York Times , chief drama critic for Bloomberg News,  the Dallas Morning News and Variety , and columnist and reviewer for Soho Weekly News and New York magazine. He's taught criticism and cultural reporting in the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University. A former member and past president of the New York Drama Critics Circle, Gerard has served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, including as jury chairman, and been a guest judge for the Village Voice Obie Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards. Act Two: Creating Partnerships and Setting Agendas for the Future of the American Theater , his report on the Second American Congress of Theater, was published in 2003 by Theater Communications Group. A 2008 Distinguished Alumnus of Purchase College, Gerard lives in New York City.