Zinn began his career as a singer-songwriter performing in Boston coffeehouses and clubs including the Unicorn and the Rathskellar. He also performed in several of the G.I. coffeehouses founded by Fred Gardner, known to be “a consequential part of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War era.” Zinn was the resident musician at the first of these, the U.F.O. in Columbia, S.C.[1] until a police raid on a residence he shared with several soldiers (one of whom was AWOL) resulted in his arrest and brief incarceration.
At Franconia College (whose president at the time was Leon Botstein) he transitioned from music to theater under the mentorship of Ronald Bennett who had been a member of the Michael Chekhov Players. With six other classmates he formed the comedy group, the Soup Troupe, which toured colleges and universities throughout New England under the management of the Sol Hurok Agency. The group moved to New York City after graduation where they performed at the Improv and Catch A Rising Star, sharing the stage with comedians Gabe Kaplan and Andy Kaufman. The style of the Soup Troupe, having originated in the broad physicality of the Chekhov technique, was out of sync with the hip New York sensibility of the early 70s and the group disbanded. Zinn gravitated to Theater For The New City (TNC) where he had earlier appeared in Barbara Garson's play, The Co-op.[2] Also at TNC he appeared in Chile ’73 by Jean-Claude van Itallie which toured to the Teatro Regio in Parma, Italy and in 1976 he directed the World Premier of Emma: A Play in Two Acts about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist by Howard Zinn.
In 1987 he directed A Lie of the Mind by Sam Shepard at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT), then in its third season. He returned the following year as Co-Artistic Director with Gip Hoppe.[3] Over the next 25 years he produced over 200 productions of new plays, many of which he also directed[4] including The Beauty Queen of Leenane starring Julie Harris. In 2006, having raised over seven million dollars in a capital campaign, WHAT broke ground on a new 220-seat theater[5] which opened in 2007 with Zinn's production of The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl featuring Jessica Pimentel in the role of Mathilde. His last production at WHAT came in 2011 with Bakersfield Mist, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere,[6] which transferred to the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, MA, winning the Elliot Norton Award that year for Best New Play.
^marvin garson, et al. “San Francisco Express Times.” San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 26, July 1968, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28043940. Accessed 10 May 2022.
