Fichandler is widely regarded as the matriarch of the American Regional Theatre Movement. She co-founded Arena Stage theatre in Washington, DC, which was the city''s first racially integrated theatre, hiring actors and performers regardless of race. She also served as Artistic Director of Arena Stage for 41 years, producing more than 400 shows and directing more than 50. In 1967, Fichandler shepherded Howard Sackler''s challenging interracial drama The Great White Hope to stage. The play became the first production to originate at a regional theatre and then transfer to Broadway, and the Broadway staging won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Under her leadership, Arena Stage also won the Tony for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1976. In 1973, Arena Stage became the first regional theatre chosen by the U.S.

Department of State to present an American play in the Soviet Union; the troupe toured with Fichandler''s production of Inherit the Wind. From 1984 until 2009 Fichandler was chair of the graduate acting program and Master Teacher of Acting and Directing at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. From 1991-94, she was artistic director of The Acting Company. Her honors and awards include the Common Wealth Award for distinguished service in the dramatic arts (1985); the Helen Hayes Award for directing The Crucible (1988); and the National Medal of Arts in 1996. She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1999, the first artistic leader outside of New York to be so honored. In 2009, she received the Foremother Award from the National Center for Health Research. Todd London has won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays and a Milestone Award for his novel. In 2009, London became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group''s Visionary Leadership Award for "an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.

" Under his leadership, New Dramatists received a special Tony Honor and the Obie''s Ross Wetzsteon Award. Before leaving New York City in 2014, he was given a special award, created for him, by the council of the Dramatists Guild. That same summer, he was named "Miss Lilly" at the Lilly Awards, honoring the contributions of women theatre artists. In 2016 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the DePaul University schools of theatre and music. A frequent speaker at conferences and artistic gatherings across the U.S. and around the world, London''s essays and articles have been translated for publication in Russia, North and South Africa, Scandinavia, Iran, Serbia, and Romania. He has taught at The New School, University of Washington, Harvard, New York University''s Tisch School of the Arts, and the Yale School of Drama.

London is the founder and director of The Third Bohemia, a traveling site for interdisciplinary artistic retreats. He''s a past Literary Director of the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Associate Artistic Director of CSC Rep off Broadway and New Playwrights Theatre in Washington, D.C. He holds an MFA in Directing from Boston University and a PhD in Literary Studies from American University.