Upon graduation from Yale, Moscone moved to Dallas where he worked at the Dallas Theater Center, serving as DTC's associate director from 1993 to 1999. While at DTC, Moscone began his freelance directing career. In 1995, he directed his first professional production at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Moscone cites as influences Joseph Papp, JoAnne Akalaitis, Stan Wojewodski, and Richard Hamburger at the Dallas Theatre Center. In 2000, Moscone became the artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater, which operates in Berkeley, California, and performs at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater in Orinda, California. In addition to providing artistic leadership at California Shakespeare Theater, Moscone continues to work as a freelance director throughout the United States, is an adjunct faculty member at American Conservatory Theater's Masters of Fine Arts Program, and since 2012 has served on the board of directors of the Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for the American theater. In 2009, Moscone received the inaugural Zelda Fichandler Award, given by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation for "transforming the American theatre through his unique and creative work". Moscone directed a wide range of plays at CalShakes and other theaters around the country. Among the more notable of his efforts was his co-direction in 2005 of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. The play, which was performed in two parts, ran more than six hours and had an enormous cast of 24 players. The San Francisco Chronicle said it was CalShakes' "most ambitious and successful productions ever". In 2010, Moscone directed the world premiere of Octavio Solis' John Steinbeck's 'The Pastures of Heaven', which was also the recipient of the inaugural NEA New Play Development Award. Moscone directed Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park in 2011 for the American Conservatory Theater, a play which later won the Pulitzer Prize. That same year, he directed Candida, for which he won the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award as Best Director of the year. Moscone made his debut as a playwright in 2012 with the world premiere of Ghost Light, which he co-created and developed with playwright Tony Taccone for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The play, which draws heavily on Moscone's experiences in the wake of his father's murder, concerns a man directing a production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, who is tormented by dreams involving a sadistic prison guard and whose love life is falling apart. In both flashback and contemporaneous action, a 14-year-old version of the director tries to sicken himself so that his father won't be murdered. The play is set against the electoral fight against California's Proposition 8, the making of Gus Van Sant's film Milk, and repeated intercessions for help by the ghost of Hamlet's father. In 2016, Moscone was a co-proponent for a ballot measure in the City of San Francisco aimed at restoring the connection between the SF Hotel Tax Fund and support for the arts. The measure failed win the necessary 2/3rds vote, earning nearly 64% of the vote. 2 years later, the arts and culture communities went back to the ballot, this time in collaboration with City Hall, and that proposition won an overwhelming 75% of the vote.
Personal life
Moscone came out as gay at a 1998 memorial service for his father and Harvey Milk. He married clean energy executive Darryl Carbonaro in November 2013. They currently reside in San Francisco.
