Ron Bashford has directed more than eighty productions and multimedia projects, from traditional play scripts to collaborations with contemporary composers and choreographers. Comfortable with a wide variety of dramatic writing, Ron's work emphasizes presence and openness in acting, dynamic staging, and visual color and form to engage audiences. Ron believes that theater-makers and audiences coming together in the moment is what it's all about.
Recent work includes: the world premiere of the new opera, The Scarlet Professor, Seven Devils and A French Nun, an original play co-created with actor Carine Montbertrand; a five-actor theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles for North Carolina Stage Company; pride@prejudice for Chester Theatre Company and Albany’s Capital Repertory Theater; and Much Ado About Nothing for Independent Shakespeare Company, a production which was nominated by the Los Angeles Times as a "Critic's Choice."
Ron has led a significant body of work for Asheville’s North Carolina Stage Company, including plays by Shakespeare, Caryl Churchill, Yasmina Resa, and Joe Orton, among others. Ron has also directed regionally for Syracuse Stage, Vermont Stage Company, Two River Theater Company, Immediate Theater Project, North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, and the Hangar Theater.
Ron is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, where he conducted an experimental workshop of Macbeth in 2008. A year earlier, he directed a National Endowment for The Arts/Shakespeare-in-American-Communities touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for schools in Western North Carolina.
Among projects for Sequitur, the New York-based, new music ensemble, Ron directed Ernst Toller: Requiem for an Idea (Joyce Soho); David Lang’s Music for Gracious Living; Sam Shepard’s Tongues (Merkin Hall); Money: A Cabaret (Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre); and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall).
Awards include The Mountain Express Reader's Choice Awards for Best Productions for Hamlet and for Hedwig and the Angry Inch (NC Stage), and the Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition Awards for Best Production and Best Director of a Musical for The Secret Garden (Clarence Brown Theatre Company).
In 2001 and 2003, Ron served as assistant director to British director Michael Bogdanov on the development of a new musical, Lone Star Love (Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critic's Circle Award nominations). Also in 2001, he was invited to create Hamlet Trio for Southwestern University's Brown Symposium: Shakespeares!!, where he was a featured panelist along with Patsy Rodenberg, Head of Voice at Britain’s Royal National Theatre, and Stephen Greenblatt, editor of the Norton Shakespeare.
Ron is a faculty member of the Department of Theater and Dance at Amherst College where he teaches courses in dramaturgy, directing, ensemble acting, and the craft of speaking. He collaborates closely with students on shows, often directing original work by students.
Upcoming projects include composer Eric Sawyer's new opera, The Scarlet Professor, to be performed at Smith College in 2017, an original one-man show for Immediate Theatre Project in Asheville, NC, and a collaborative ensemble project for North Carolina Stage Company.
Ron holds a BA in music from Amherst College and an MFA in acting from the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program. He has also completed short-term studies at Movement Theater Studio NYC, Williamstown Theater Festival, National Shakespeare Conservatory, Harvard/A.R.T., and City of London University.