James Larson

For twenty-eight years James Larson served as Artistic Director of the Omaha Theater Company and first established the education, touring, and multicultural programs that are currently in operation. Mr. Larson was also Associate Professor of Theater at New York University and Director of Educational Theater at NYU. As an actor, Mr. Larson has performed from coast to coast with Megan Terry’s Magic Theatre, performing for the athletes in the Olympic Village at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980 and at the Seattle Bumbershoot Festival in 1979. He studied acting with the late Zbigniew Cynkutis, principal actor with Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Theater Laboratory. As a playwright, Mr. Larson has had his plays produced around the country and overseas at the Edinburgh Theater Festival, with several productions in New York City at venues such as the Wonderhorse, and he has been the recipient of a Rockefeller grant and a grant from the Advanced Office of Drama Research for his playwriting. Mr. Larson has brought playwrights such as Tony Award®-winning Mark Medoff, National Book Award-recipient Robert Bly, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Joe Sutton, and Obie Award-winning, Guggenheim recipient Megan Terry to write for the Omaha Theater Company, and has brought in all the leading writers in the field of Theater for Young Audiences, along with former Artistic Director of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Everett Quinton, and three-time Academy Award-nominee, Debra Winger, and best-selling children’s author in the history of publishing, Stan Berenstain, who has written and designed scenery for two shows at the theater, and musical director of the Tony Awards each year, Elliot Lawrence. Mr. Larson has been published in American Theater, in the Drama/Theater Teacher, Stage Directions, and in all the major journals for Educational Theater. He has served on theater review panels for the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and has served as a reader for the NEA Playwriting Awards. He was recently Guest Director at the Theatre School at Florida State University. Under his leadership, the Omaha Theater Company received the highest award in its field, the Sara Spencer Artistic Achievement Award, and the Nebraska Governor’s Organizational Achievement Award. Mr. Larson received his Ph.D. in Theater from the University of Kansas, where he was the recipient of the Kilty Kane award, the highest award the university can give to a graduating theater student.