Two Guest Directors Energize Fall Theatrical Season
Poetry, music, and movement will bring Ovid’s Metamorphoses to vivid life this fall at the Loeb Drama Center under the direction of Carmel O’Reilly, founder and Artistic Director of Boston’s acclaimed Súgán Theatre Company. O’Reilly is sponsored by the OFA’s Visiting Director’s Program, in collaboration with the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) and the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.).
“In Mary Zimmerman’s delightful adaptation of Ovid’s 2000-year-old myths,” says O’Reilly, “the ancient texts are transformed into an imaginative theatrical experience.”
O’Reilly has directed most of Súgán’s productions over the past 15 years, including the Elliot Norton Award-winning productions of The Sanctuary Lamp and St Nicholas. St Nicholas was later re-staged at the Hasty Pudding in a co-production with the American Repertory Theatre. She is also a two-time winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director for The Lonesome West, Bailegangaire and This Lime Tree Bower. She received the 2004 Eire Society Gold Medal for her contributions to Irish arts and culture.
Kara Kaufman '08, President of the HRDC, who has worked with two previous Visiting Directors, describes the program as “always a highlight of the fall season; bringing in a professional director generates nearly unparalleled enthusiasm from all quarters of the Harvard theater community. It’s a unique opportunity for actors, designers, techies, and producers to collaborate with a strong artist who brings real-life theatrical experience.”
Oh Dad, Poor Dad... Inaugurates New College Theatre
The opening of the New College Theatre (formerly the Hasty Pudding Theatre) will be celebrated by a production of 1962’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad by Arthur Kopit ’59, with an undergraduate cast directed by David R. Gammons '92, who will helm a professional design team.
“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to return to Harvard to work with the young artists,” says Gammons, “and also to have the honor of opening this brand new state of the art facility. Oh Dad... is ideal for the setting here, since it is a product of a young author who was experimenting with language and form.”
Gammons is a director, designer, visual artist, and theatre educator. In addition to graduating Harvard College with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies, he also is a graduate of the Directing Program of the A.R.T.’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training. He has directed for the Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theatre and the A.R.T.
The founder and artistic coordinator of No More Masterpieces, a performance collective dedicated to generating original dance-theatre work, Gammons is currently the Director of the Theatre Program at Concord Academy. He was recently named Outstanding Director in the 2007 Elliot Norton Awards for his production of Titus Andronicus with the Actor’s Shakespeare Project. Gammons’ collaborators will be scenic designer J. Michael Griggs of the A.R.T., and lighting designer Sarah Sidman '93, and costume designer Heidi Hermiller.
Kopit won the Outer Circle Award for Drama for Oh Dad..., as well as the 1982 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Nine. In The New Yorker, John Lahr described Kopit as an “entrepreneur of the extraordinary.”
