Greg Carter (theatre director)

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Greg Carter is the founding Artistic Director of Strawberry Theatre Workshop (aka Strawshop), a non-profit theatre company in Seattle, Washington. He works as a freelance director, designer, and stage manager and teaches at Cornish College of the Arts. As a playwright, he has adapted This Land (Woody Guthrie), Fellow Passengers (Charles Dickens), and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder) for the stage.

Strawberry Theatre Workshop is an award-winning Seattle theatre company founded in 2003 by Greg Carter, associated with a movement in that city to improve wages for professional theatre artists. Its name "is derived from the Strawberry Fields of popular music, and the Beatles, who used their recording studio as a daily laboratory of expression."

Cornish College of the Arts private college for visual and performing arts in Seattle

Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a college in the Denny Triangle, Capitol Hill and Seattle Center areas of Seattle, Washington, USA that focuses on the arts.

Woody Guthrie American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music; his music, including songs, such as "This Land Is Your Land", has inspired several generations both politically and musically. He wrote hundreds of political, folk, and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works. His album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, Dust Bowl Ballads, is included on Mojo magazine's list of 100 Records That Changed The World. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, Sammy Walker, Tom Paxton, AJJ, Brian Fallon, and Sixto Rodríguez have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence. He frequently performed with the slogan "This machine kills fascists" displayed on his guitar.

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Professional career

Carter studied Drama and English at Duke University (1989), and has a Master of Architecture from the University of Washington (1999). [1] From 1989-1994, he was Resident Artist and Technical Director at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT) in Minneapolis. He trained as a puppeteer with Sandy Spieler and Jim Ouray at HOBT, and received a 1993 grant from the Puppeteers of America [2] to create a play for puppets and actors derived from the writing, drawing, and music of American folk artist Woody Guthrie. The play This Land was remounted in Seattle in 2004 as the inaugural event of Strawberry Theatre Workshop., [3] and again at Strawshop in Fall 2012.

Duke University private university in Durham, North Carolina, United States

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

University of Washington public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States

The University of Washington is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre puppet theater company from Minneapolis, Minnesota

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre is a puppet company and nonprofit organization from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The company has written and performed scores of full-length puppet plays, performed throughout the US, Canada, Korea, and Haiti and toured the Mississippi River from end to end. The theatre is best known for sponsoring the annual May Day Parade and Ceremony that is seen by as many as 50,000 people each year.

After completing a graduate program at UW, Carter served as Production Manager and Technical Director at Book-It Repertory Theatre (1998–2002). He designed over a dozen plays at Book-It which appeared on the stages of ACT Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, On the Boards, and Intiman Playhouse. As a freelance artist, Carter has designed sets for Seattle Symphony and Portland Center Stage. He is an Associate Professor of Performance Production at Cornish, where he has taught since 1998. [4]

ACT Theatre theater in Seattle, Washington, United States

ACT Theatre is a regional, non-profit theatre organization in Seattle, in the US state of Washington. Gregory A. Falls (1922–1997) founded ACT in 1965 and served as its first Artistic director; at the time ACT was founded he was also head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington. Falls was identified with the theatrical avant garde of the time, and founded ACT because he saw the Seattle Repertory Theatre as too specifically devoted to classics.

Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Braden Abraham and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann. It received the 1990 Regional Theatre Tony Award.

On the Boards non-profit organisation in the USA

On the Boards (OtB) is a non-profit contemporary performing arts organization in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1978. Originally located at Washington Hall in the Central District, the organization moved in 1998 to their current location in Uptown. They present more than 40 distinct shows annually, amounting to over 100 performance nights each year in 2 theater spaces.

In 2011, Carter organized three small Seattle theatre companies to form a partnership eventually known as Black Box Operations. The three companies worked with the affordable housing developer Capitol Hill Housing on the design of a multi-use building that combines 88 residential units, office space, storefront retail, a community meeting space, and two flexible black box theatre venues. The building, called 12th Ave Arts, opened in Fall 2014, with first performances the following January. [5]

Beginning in summer 2015, Greg Carter has served as Administrative Director of Black Box Operations.

Critical reception

In 2007, Strawshop received The Stranger newspaper’s Genius Award for an Organization [6] —a prize awarded in other years to On the Boards, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the Frye Art Museum. In 2010, Carter was nominated for a TPS Gregory Award as Outstanding Director for The Laramie Project , and again in 2015 as Outstanding Director for Our Town .

<i>The Stranger</i> (newspaper) Alternative biweekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington,

The Stranger is an alternative biweekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, U.S. It runs a blog known as Slog.

Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) is a ballet company based in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It is said to have the highest per capita attendance in the United States, with 11,000 subscribers in 2004. The company consists of 49 dancers; there are over 100 performances throughout the year.

Frye Art Museum art museum in Seattle

The Frye Art Museum is an art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA. The museum emphasizes painting and sculpture from the nineteenth century to the present. Its holdings originate in the private collection of Charles (1858–1940) and Emma Frye. Charles, owner of a local meatpacking plant, set aside money in his will for a museum to house the Fryes' collection of over 230 paintings. The Frye Art Museum opened to the public in 1952, and was Seattle's first free art museum. The museum building was originally designed by Paul Thiry, although it has since been considerably altered.

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References

  1. ↑ UW Degree Validation
  2. ↑ Puppeteers of America
  3. ↑ Strawberry Theatre Workshop
  4. ↑ Faculty Biographies
  5. ↑ Berson, Misha. "Affordable apartments, theaters share stage in Capitol Hill complex". Seattle Times.
  6. ↑ Stranger Genius 2007
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