Zimmerman won last season's Tony for her direction of Metamorphoses which began at Off-Broadway's Second Stage. With Notebooks, the Chicago-bred director-adapter dramatizes the ideas of the Italian Renaissance scientist, inventor and artist using music, dance and acrobatics.
A co-production with California's Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the play reunites Zimmerman with many members of the Metamorphoses ensemble, including Anjali Bhimani, Christopher Donahue, Doug Hara, Kyle Hall, Louise Lamson, and Mariann Mayberry. The company of Notebooks also features Paul Oakley Stovall.
The design team for The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci includes Scott Bradley (sets), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes based on the original designs of Allison Reeds), T.J. Gerckens (lighting) and Rob Milburn with Michael Bodeen (sound). The production will feature original music composed by Miriam Strum and Michael Bodeen.
Other Zimmerman works include The Odyssey, Arabian Nights, Journey To The West, Secret in the Wings, S/M and Eleven Rooms of Proust. One of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company most fruitful members, she has also directed Measure for Measure, Henry VIII (New York Shakespeare Festival), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Boston's Huntington Theatre Company) and All’s Well That Ends Well (Chicago's Goodman Theatre).
Notebooks premiered at the Goodman in November of 1993 and was presented in New York City at the 1994 Serious Fun! Festival at Lincoln Center. Tickets for the Second Stage staging of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at their midtown Manhattan space at 307 West 43rd Street (just off 8th Ave.) can be purchased through (212) 246-4422 or (800) 766-6048. For more information, visit them on the web at www.SecondStageTheatre.com.