Larry Carpenter

Last updated
Larry Carpenter
Larry Carpenter, about 2017.jpg
Larry Carpenter, about 2017
Born (1948-08-12) August 12, 1948 (age 76)
Brockport, New York, United States

Larry Carpenter (born August 12, 1948) is an American theatre and television director and producer. In the theatre, he has worked as an artistic director, associate artistic director, a managing director and general manager in both the New York and Regional arenas. He also works as a theatre director and is known primarily for large projects, working on musicals and classical plays equally. In television, he works as a director for New York daytime dramas. He has served as executive vice president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, [1] the national labor union for professional stage directors and choreographers. He is also a member of the Directors Guild of America PAC.

Contents

Biography

Early life and career

Born and raised in Brockport, New York, Carpenter became involved in the theatre at age 12. In his hometown, SUNY Brockport offered a Theatre Arts major and produced a semi-professional summer theatre where he worked as a backstage hand and as a young actor with such touring stars as Peggy Wood, Ann Harding, John Kerr and Leo G. Carroll. He enrolled in Boston University's School of Fine and Applied Arts as an undergraduate designer and director. He graduated as a director and actor and spent the next several years acting, singing and dancing with the Oregon and San Diego Shakespeare Festivals, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and with the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, CT.

Artistic management and theatre direction

At Stratford, and subsequently at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, he became the associate artistic director to Michael Kahn. He also met and married his wife Julia MacKenzie.

From Stratford, Carpenter moved to New York to become managing director of Garland Wright's Lion Theatre Company; and then general manager of the Harold Clurman Theatre. He also continued to direct. At the Lion he directed Charles Nolte's A Night at the Black Pig and J.M. Barry's Mary Rose – while also sharing directing duties with Wright for the subsequent iterations of Jack Heifner's Vanities. For Playwrights' Horizons he directed Martin Sherman's Cracks , The Mousetrap , and Anything Goes! He also served as Gower Champion's associate director for his Broadway productions of Rockabye Hamlet, A Broadway Musical , The Act with Liza Minnelli, and 42nd Street .

For the next eight years, while continuing to work as a freelance director, Carpenter served as the artistic director of the American Stage Festival in Milford, NH. Of ASF's forty-five productions of revivals and new work, five productions were subsequently transferred to Broadway. Most notable are two productions directed by Carpenter: Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor and Barry Keating's Starmites! [2] For this last, Carpenter received a Tony Award nomination. [3]

Returning to New York, Carpenter directed the Roundabout Theatre Company productions of The Doctor's Dilemma, Light Up The Sky and Privates on Parade [4] —this latter starring Jim Dale, Donna Murphy, and Simon Jones. Privates on Parade received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. [5] He then directed Lady in the Dark for City Center Encores! and the world premiere of Preston Sturges' A Cup of Coffee at SoHo Rep. He also served as associate artistic director for the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Television and theatre direction

Carpenter then combined his theatre career with television to become a director of daytime drama. His award-winning body of work includes experience with multiple and single camera formats—with the edit suite and with live-broadcast—in studio and on location. He has directed the daytime drama As the World Turns , winning his first Daytime Emmy Award. After brief stints with Guiding Light and All My Children , he joined ABC's One Life to Live and then General Hospital . There he's received four DGA Awards and, together with the OLTL and GH DGA teams, four additional Emmys. Throughout, he has continued to work as a theatre director, working with the Huntington Theatre Company, Seattle Rep, Goodspeed Opera House, Kansas City Repertory—the American Conservatory, Alliance, Pioneer and Walnut Street theatres—and in Los Angeles, the Pasadena Playhouse, Westwood Theatre, Musical Theatre West and La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Adaptation

Carpenter's first adaptation of A Christmas Carol played many seasons at New England's Merrimack Regional and Nickerson theatres—and at the Citadel Theatre in Alberta and Iowa Stage Theatre Company. A second musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol played the Wilbur and Huntington theatres in Boston—starring Paul Benedict and then Clive Revill.

He wrote a new libretto for the Goodspeed Opera House production of Oscar Strauss's operetta The Chocolate Soldier. He also significant reworked Meredith Willson's Here's Love for Goodspeed Opera House; and Kiss Me, Kate for the Pioneer Theatre Company.

For the Huntington Theatre Company he adapted and directed Ostrovsky's Diary of a Scoundrel and Feydeau's The Lady from Maxim's. He created a new version of Dion Boucicault's The Shaughraun; for the Huntington and Seattle Repertory theatres; and he adapted The Captain of Koepnick for the Huntington and ACT, San Francisco.

Carpenter's adaptation of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities played at both American Stage Festival and the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, FL.

Educator

Carpenter has taught and directed performance projects at the Juilliard School: Theatre Division; New York University: Tisch School of the Arts; American Conservatory Theater Training Program; SUNY Purchase School of Theatre; Rutgers University: Mason Gross School of the Arts; and Marymount Manhattan College.

Awards and nominations

Tony Award

New York Drama Critics' Circle

Independent Reviewers of New England

Directors Guild of America Award

Daytime Emmy Award

Education

In 2002, Carpenter completed his master's degree in 19th Century British Theatre at New York University. Previously, he received the Bob Hope Scholarship for graduate study at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts MFA Theatre program. He received his BFA from Boston University School of Fine Arts, where he graduated cum laude as the Harold C. Case Scholar. He has attended many workshops and seminars, the most extensive of which was a semester long FEDAPT program: "Producing for the Professional Theatre."

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre Royal Stratford East</span> Theatre in London, England

The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a 460 seat Victorian producing theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company, famously associated with director Joan Littlewood, whose statue is outside the theatre.

Martin Charnin was an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director, and lyricist of the musical Annie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Warchus</span> British director and dramatist (born 1966)

Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.

Walter Bobbie is an American theatre director, choreographer, and occasional actor and dancer. Bobbie has directed both musicals and plays on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and was the Artistic Director of the New York City Center Encores! concert series. He directed the long-running Broadway revival of the musical Chicago. His most well-known acting roles were Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and Roger in the original Broadway cast of Grease.

Desmond Steven McAnuff is the American-Canadian former artistic director of Canada's Stratford Festival and director of such Broadway musical theatre productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.

Tazewell Thompson is an American theatre director, the former artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse (2006–07) in Westport, Connecticut and the Syracuse Stage (1992–95) in New York state. Prior to that he was an assistant director at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. He is the Director of Opera Studies at Manhattan School of Music.

John Doyle is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack O'Brien (director)</span> American director

Jack O'Brien is an American director, producer, writer and lyricist. He served as the Artistic Director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California from 1981 through the end of 2007.

Lonny Price is an American director, actor, and writer, primarily in theatre. He is best known for his New York directing work, including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, Neil Kellerman in Dirty Dancing, and Ronnie Crawford in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenny Leon</span> American stage and television director

Kenny Leon is an American actor, director and producer. He is notable for his extensive work on Broadway, on television, and in regional theater. He has received a Tony Award and a Drama League Award as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Drama Desk Award.

Frank Vincent Ferrante is an American stage actor, comedian and director known for his improvisation and audience interactive comedy. He has performed as Groucho Marx in the Arthur Marx/Robert Fisher play Groucho: A Life in Revue and in his own An Evening With Groucho. Ferrante was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Comedy Performance of the Year' for the title role in Groucho: A Life in Revue in London's West End in 1987. He had previously won New York's 1987 Theatre World Award for 'Outstanding Debut' for the same role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tina Landau</span> American playwright and theatre director (born 1962)

Tina Landau is an American playwright and theatre director. Known for her large-scale, musical, and ensemble-driven work, Landau's productions have appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally, most extensively at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago where she is an ensemble member.

Diane Marie Paulus is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of Hair and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and won the award in 2013 for her revival of Pippin.

Stafford Arima is a Canadian-born theatre director. Arima studied at York University in Toronto, where he was the recipient of the Dean's Prize for Excellence in Creative Work. He is a member of the SDC and CAEA. In April 2017, he became the artistic director of Theatre Calgary.

Warren Carlyle is a British director and choreographer who was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England. He received Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Director of a Musical for the 2009 revival of Finian's Rainbow.

Randy Skinner is an American dancer, director and choreographer, primarily for the stage. He has been nominated four times for Tony Awards, three times for Drama Desk Awards, and four times for Outer Critics Circle Awards for choreography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon Greenberg</span> American theater director

Gordon Greenberg is an American stage director, a theater and television writer, and an Artistic Associate at The New Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Weild</span>

Kim Weild is a Drama Desk Award-nominated American theatre director, educator, writer, actor and choreographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Gattelli</span>

Christopher Gattelli is an American choreographer, performer and theatre director.

Darko Tresnjak is a director of plays, musicals, and opera, and winner of several awards, including the Tony Award. He was the artistic director of the Hartford Stage in Connecticut, United States.

References

  1. ↑ Archived 2013-11-27 at the Wayback Machine Stage Directors and Choreographers Bio
  2. ↑ "Theater Reviews". The New York Times. 2017-11-26. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2017-12-16.
  3. ↑ Rothstein, Mervyn (1989-05-09). "2 Shows on Tony List 10 Times". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2017-12-16.
  4. ↑ Gussow, Mel (1989-08-23). "Review/Theater; Comically Carrying Culture to the Colonies". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2017-12-16.
  5. ↑ "Past Awards". www.dramacritics.org. Retrieved 2017-12-16.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.