Roger Danforth

About

Roger Danforth is a New York-based Director, Producer, Educator and Arts Executive. His career has brought him such positions as Artistic Director of the Drama League Directors Project, Acting Artistic Director/Literary Manager of The Cleveland Play House, and Literary Advisor and Producer of the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Danforth has directed extensively in New York and regionally. Among his productions at the Cleveland Play House are Boy Meets Girl with Jane Krakowski, A Christmas Memory with Group Theatre actress Ruth Nelson, The Heidi Chronicles with Evan Pappas, The Cemetery Club with Elizabeth Franz and Nanette Fabray (co-director), and his world premiere of Seth Greenland’s Jungle Rot which was honored with a major grant from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, a Steinberg New Play Citation, and was selected for The Best Plays of 1995-1996. Other notable productions include: Blue Window (Berkshire Theatre Festival), All My Sons (Two River Theatre, “One of NJ’s Top Ten Events of 2006:” Newark Star-Ledger), South Pacific (Cleveland’s Cain Park), Galt McDermott’s The Human Comedy (York Theatre Company), the Jeff Award-winning Rosemary (InterAct Theatre) and his critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production of The Oxford Roof Climbers Rebellion at Urban Stages, which transferred to Capital Rep. Other regional theaters include Florida Studio Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Hubbard Hall, and Artpark. He has developed plays for the Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices, The National New Play Network, The Lark, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and has worked with some of the theatre’s best writers including Alan Ball, Jules Feiffer, Jo Carson, Lydia Stryk and Lee Blessing.

Danforth has extensive credits as a producer. He was a line producer for both the Cleveland Play House and Berkshire Theatre Festival, and he has served on the artistic staffs of several New York theatres: the WPA, Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, and Urban Stages. For 11 years he produced the Drama League’s benefit gala show, honoring some of the theatre’s biggest stars including Angela Lansbury, Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, James Earl Jones and Neil Patrick Harris. He believes in using his talents to benefit young artists – he has done numerous guest artist residencies, was a member of the theatre faculty at the University of West Florida, and since 2000 has served as the Directing Advisor at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference. He has nurtured the careers of some of the finest young directors in America today through his 21 years as artistic director of the Drama League Directors Project. Danforth is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

BA, Western Michigan University

MFA, School of Theatre, Florida State University