Broadway Wheeler directed twice on Broadway, staging
David Rabe's Vietnam play
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977), for which
Al Pacino won a
Tony Award and
Drama Desk Award for Best Actor, and
Shakespeare's Richard III (1979), also with Pacino. Both productions originated at Theatre Company of Boston and were remounted on Broadway.
Theatre Company of Boston In 1963, Wheeler founded the Theatre Company of Boston (TCB) with producer Naomi Thornton, and served as its Artistic Director until 1975. During the 1960s, TCB was one of only two resident theatre companies in Boston, along with the Charles Playhouse. While the Charles produced well-known classics by authors such as
Tennessee Williams and
Arthur Miller, TCB produced adventurous new works by controversial playwrights such as
Harold Pinter,
Samuel Beckett,
Sam Shepard,
Edward Albee,
Bertolt Brecht,
Ed Bullins,
Jeffrey Bush,
John Hawkes, and
Adrienne Kennedy. During his tenure at TCB, Wheeler directed over 80 of these productions (among them ten by Pinter, seven by Brecht, five by Albee, nine by Beckett, two by O'Neill). At the A.R.T., he directed
Harold Pinter's ''
No Man's Land in 2007, starring Paul Benedict and Max Wright, which won Elliot Norton Awards for Wheeler for Best Director and for Max Wright as Best Actor. No Man's Land'' was Wheeler's 14th Pinter production, which included the American premieres of
The Dwarfs,
A Slight Ache, and
The Room.
Other regional theatres Wheeler also directed at regional theatres including the
Guthrie Theater,
Alley Theatre,
Paper Mill Playhouse,
Berkeley Repertory Theatre,
Arizona Theatre Company,
Pittsburgh Playhouse,
Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater,
Gloucester Stage, and the
Théâtre Charles de Rochefort in Paris, where he directed the French premiere of
Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. ==
Good Will Hunting ==