Luke Yankee
American Playwright

Luke Yankee (born February 7, 1960) is an American writer, playwright, and director. He has also taught playwriting at California State University, Fullerton and Chapman University.
Early life and education
Yankee is the son of actress Eileen Heckart. His father, Jack Yankee, was an insurance broker. He studied at the University of California, Riverside, New York University, and at the Juilliard Drama School in New York. He has an MFA in Playwriting and Screenwriting. He is married to Don Hill, the Chair of Drama at the University of California, Irvine.
Career
Yankee worked as producing artistic director of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera. He assistant directed six Broadway plays for such directors as Harold Prince, Ellis Rabb, Brian Murray, and Gerald Freedman. His play, The Last Lifeboat, has had 55 productions in North America.
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This entry incorporates text from “Luke Yankee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.