Biografia
Gian Pietro Calasso is a director, screenwriter, photographer, and university professor specializing in performing arts. Born in Florence and also an American citizen, he has studied and worked across Italy, England, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States, and Japan.
After graduating with top honors from classical studies (high school diploma with highest marks in Italy; cum laude degree from Rome University with publication), he pursued advanced training in performing arts at Yale University's Drama School and the Actors Studio in New York.
He honed his skills as a director, actor, choreographer, and writer under the guidance of renowned mentors such as Bertolt Brecht, Lee Strasberg, Marcel Marceau, Alexander Sahkaroff, Akira Kurosawa, Luigi Squarzina, Mario Monicelli, Franco Zeffirelli, and Billy Wilder.
Calasso has written around thirty film and television scripts and directed an equal number of productions spanning cinema, television, theater, opera, and radio.
He has received two international awards: the MystFest award for his screenplay "Covenant with Death," and the Japanese critics' prize for Best Director of the Year for his production of Pirandello's Henry IV in Japan.
He is the author of twenty publications covering diverse subjects, including Western avant-garde, classical Japanese theater, cinema, psychology, opera librettos, and short novels.
In photography, Calasso has contributed to newspapers and magazines, created advertising posters, and authored a bilingual (English and Italian) photographic art book titled "Narcissus' Eros," published by Mondadori, Leonardo Arte. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired two hundred of his photographs. He has taught directing and screenwriting at five universities in Italy and the USA, including UCLA in Los Angeles and the University of Rome "La Sapienza," where he currently teaches "Digital Directing" and "Screenwriting.
