Theater

James Darrah

Initial PGF Award: Theater Scholarship, 2009, Robert and Gloria Hausman Theater Award

Director, production designer, and visual artist James Darrah recently made an acclaimed Chicago Opera Theater debut with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée.  Directing/design work in opera includes productions of Handel’s Agrippina, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Cavalli’s Giasone, and the west coast premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Flight for Opera UCLA, La Tragédie de Carmen (Bizet/Brook) and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges for the Hawaii Arts Festival, and Britten’s The Golden Vanity at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.  MFA: UCLA Theater, Film, and Television, where he directed and designed for productions of plays, operas and musicals including Loot (Orton), The Baltimore Waltz (Vogel), Carousel (Rodgers and Hammerstein), The Last Five Years (Jason Robert Brown) and The Medium (Menotti).  He served his apprenticeship first in directing and design with the Croatian National Theatre and the Split Summer Festival; then as assistant/associate with directors Stephen Wadsworth (Ariodante at Juilliard, The Bartered Bride for The Metropolitan Opera at Juilliard, Agamemnon at the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA) and Peter Kazaras (Falstaff and The 3penny Opera at UCLA, Le nozze di Figaro at Opera Cleveland). Upcoming work includes a return to Chicago with Handel's seldom-seen Teseo, and Handel's L'allegro, il Peneroso, ed il Moderato in Hawaii,  Shakespeare’s As You Like It and L'incoronazione di Poppea for the launch of the Camden Stage Festival in Maine, of which he is artistic director, and work with Christopher Alden on Don Giovanni with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall.  He is in pre-production for his first feature film to be announced in Fall 2012.

website: www.jamesdarrah.com