George Coates

George Coates (born March 19, 1952) is an American theatre director most notable for his work with George Coates Performance Works (GCPW), which he founded in 1977 in San Francisco, CA. The company produced over 20 multi-media live performances over a span of 25 years, winning a multitude of awards for its international performances, earning critical acclaim in Asia, Europe and South America and gaining North American attention at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. One of the first to incorporate digital screen projections with performance in live theatre in the early 1990s, at times giving audience members 3-D glasses, Coates' became known as a pioneer of experimental live theatre.
Coates collaborated with Steve Jobs in 1988 to create a multimedia production for the unveiling of Jobs' NeXT Computer System and was featured for this production in the 2015 film, Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin.
In 2000, having obtained the rights to Valerie Solanas' play "Up Your Ass", Coates became the first playwright to premiere Solanas' long lost work in his San Francisco theatre. The production, which toured to New York and was retitled "Up Your A$$" by Coates, was regarded one of the raunchiest and most controversial shows around, with an all-female cast, many of which were dressed in drag.