Past Faculty, MFA in Film
Joan Darling has been nominated four times for an Emmy (the first woman to be nominated) and twice for a Director’s Guild of America Award, winning one Emmy and one DGA award. She won the Image award for directing. Also winning an Emmy for her performance as Dorothy Parker in Woven in a Crazy Plaid.
Joan was the original director of the groundbreaking show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, as well as director of the legendary Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” Her first feature film, FIRST LOVE, was on several “Ten Best” Lists. Joan has also directed many television pilots and shows, including M*A*S*H, Rhoda, Phyllis, One Day at a Time, Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, Magnum PI, and Civil Wars. Her television acting roles include being a series regular on Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law and Dorothy Parker in Woven in Crazy Plaid (Emmy). Joan has also written for several television programs, including The Dick Van Dyke Show. Joan is also a well-known acting teacher. She created the Directing the Actor workshop for the Sundance Directors Lab and has served as a Creative Advisor at The Sundance Director’s lab and the European adjunct, Moonstone, for the past twenty years. She directed and starred in the hit play Punch and Judy at the Century City Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Joan has served as a guest Professor at USC in Los Angeles, CalArts, and Carnegie Mellon and was a professor at UNC Chapel Hill for six years. She starred in Arsenic and Old Lace at Gary Marshall’s Falcon Theatre in LA. She created a one woman show, Joni vs. the Bard…The Shakespeare Smackdown, which played in New York at the Wings Theatre and Theatre Forty in Los Angeles. Her episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show was chosen by TV Guide as the number-one television episode of all time.