meet the resident stage director

Stephen Jarrett’s (Director) Opera credits include Der Freischutz (C.M. von Weber) and Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe (first NYC revival) for the Bronx Opera. Also in New York: Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Timothy Sullivan) Center for Contemporary Opera.

Locally he directed two double-bills for Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia: The Moon and The Wise Woman (C. Orff), and The Scarf (L. Hoiby) and The Poor Sailor (D. Milhaud). Also, for Opera Americana, The Tender Land (A. Copland). For Lyric Opera of Dallas, The Grand Duchess (J. Offenbach). His first professional opera experience was as Stage Manager and Lighting Designer for the San Francisco’s touring Western Opera Theater.

Primarily a theater director, his New York credits include the first NYC revivals of Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch,  Frank D. Gilroy’s Who’ll Save the Plowboy? and Lawrence and Lee’s The Gang’s All Here. He also directed Old, New Borrowed and Bluesy, a tap dance revue starring Jane Goldberg and Charles “Cookie” Cook.

DC theater credits include, Edge of the Universe Theater: Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker,  A Number, by Caryl Churchill, Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, and The Summoning of Everyman. For The American Century Theater he directed Murray Schisgal’s Luv, Terry Curtis Fox’s Cops, George Kelly’s The Show-Off and Aly Currin’s Treadwell: Light and Dark.

Other career highlights include ten years as an Equity stage manager (N.Y.C. and points west), three years running an Army theater in Zweibruecken, Germany, and twelve years as Staging Director and Production Manager for the annual Hispanic Heritage Awards (Kennedy Center). He was the founding Director of Performing Arts at the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, MD, and spent ten years as the Executive Director of the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive (WAPAVA). His theater training was at the University of Iowa, Catholic University, and Yale Drama.