A. J. Antoon; Innovative Tony-Winning Director

A. J. Antoon, innovative director who won a Tony for his work on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “That Championship Season,” has died in New York. He was 47.

Antoon, best known for his productions for the New York Shakespeare Festival, died Wednesday at New York University Medical Center of AIDS-related lymphoma.

Los Angeles was host to two of Antoon’s productions in recent years--the 1985 revival of “South Pacific” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and “Double Cross” at the Pasadena Playhouse last year.

Antoon won his Tony for “That Championship Season” in 1973 when he was in his 20s. That same year, he directed “Much Ado About Nothing,” which moved to Broadway after its popular run in Central Park. That production later appeared on CBS television.

A native of Methuen, Mass., Alfred Joseph Antoon Jr. began his work in theater when he attended Lawrence Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, Mass. He studied briefly at Boston College and attended the Shadowbrook Jesuit seminary in Lexington, Mass., intending to become a priest. Instead, he went to Yale School of Drama, leaving to stage a series of Anton Chekhov adaptations.

He first worked with Joseph Papp, who created the Shakespeare Festival, in 1971 at New York’s Public Theater.

Antoon’s innovations included staging Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” set in 19th Century Brazil, and “The Taming of the Shrew” set in the Wild West.

His Broadway productions included “The Rink” starring Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, and Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.” He also directed the current “Song of Singapore,” which has had a long run off-Broadway.

Among Antoon’s projects in progress at his death was his screenplay of “Snow White.”

Antoon is survived by a brother, Michael, two sisters, Jessica Leavitt and Marsha Roy, all of Methuen, Mass., and his companion, Peter Perez of New York.