Full Name Rick Lombardo Name Rick Lombardo | Role Theatre Director | |
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Born March 24, 1959 (age 65) ( 1959-03-24 ) Brooklyn, New York, U.S. Occupation director, producer, writer | ||
@Google: Rick Lombardo: Theater in a Digital Age
Rick Lombardo (born March 24, 1959) is a prolific and award-winning American theatre director, playwright and adaptor. He is the former Producing Artistic Director of San Jose Repertory Theatre, and the former Artistic Director of New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, Massachusetts. Lombardo is currently the Chair and Artistic Director of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University .
Contents
- Google Rick Lombardo Theater in a Digital Age
- Education
- Life and career
- Selected works directed
- Awards
- References
He is an Executive Board member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and a Senior Fellow with the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, actress Rachel Harker.
Education
Lombardo attended and graduated Georgetown University with a BS in Psychology and minor in theatre, and earned the MFA in Directing from the Boston University School for the Arts.
Life and career
Upon graduation Lombardo was named co-director ad interim of the theatre program at Fordham University's College at Lincoln Center from 1991–1992, where he also taught as an assistant professor of acting and directing for four years.
During this time Lombardo also became the Founding Artistic Director of Stillwater Theater Company in New York City, and later as Artistic Director of The Players Guild in Canton, Ohio.
In 1997 Lombardo became the Artistic Director of New Repertory Theater, then located in Newton, Massachusetts. Over the next 12 years Lombardo would be credited with bringing in a younger audience and leading the company to a larger and more profitable theatrical venue in the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, Massachusetts where the company currently resides.
Lombardo left New Rep after the 2008–09 season to helm San Jose Repertory Theatre in San Jose, California after a national search was conducted to replace outgoing Artistic Director Timothy Near.
In 2013 Lombardo assumed the role of Producing Artistic Director of the company after a vote by the board of trustees to change the leadership model from a dual CEO structure to a single CEO model.
In June 2014, the San Jose Repertory Theatre board of trustees informed Mr. Lombardo that they had voted to close the theater as he was in rehearsal for American Premiere of "Landscape With Weapon" by Joe Penhall. About the closing, Lombardo had this to say:
I was in mourning, it was the same grief I felt when my parents died.
In July 2014 Lombardo began production of his original musical (co-written with Kirsten Brandt, and Haddon Kime) “The Snow Queen: A New Musical” for The New York Musical Theatre Festival. This production won both a favorable review from The New York Times as well as an award for Best Overall Design which Lombardo shared with David Cuthbert (lighting and projection designer), Frances Nelson McSherry (costume designer), and Haddon Kime (co-sound designer.)
In April 2015 Lombardo accepted an offer to become Chair of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Selected works directed
Awards
2009 Eliott Norton Award for Sustained Excellence