Richard Chambers, MFA
Associate Professor
Department of Theatre
Phone: 617-305-1722
Fax: 617-742-5024
Email: rchambers@suffolk.edu
Office: Archer Building, Rm. 444
Website
Education
- MFA, New York University
Biography
I have been working in the professional theatre for 30 years. I have designed over 150 professional productions throughout the Northeast for companies such as The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, StageWest, North Shore Music Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, The American Stage Festival, the Cape Playhouse and Shakespeare and Company, as well as the Buffalo Philharmonic, The Portland Symphony and the Virginia Symphony. I have designed premiers by playwrights such as Derek Walcott, Russ Lees and Robert Brustein. I have also designed the Off-Broadway premiers of Ronan Noone’s plays The Lepers of Baile Baiste, The Blowin of Baile Gall and The Atheist.
I received my MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where I studied with Oliver Smith and John Conklin, and was the recipient of the Meir Award for design there. For many years I assisted venerable designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond on a variety of projects, among them evenings of theatre on several cruises to various destinations around the world produced by Philip Langner and the Theatre Guild. Celebrities for these events included Helen Hays, Carol Channing, Patricia Neal, Eartha Kitt, Robert Whitehead, Ben Gazarra, Judy Kaye, George Hearn, Juliette Prouse, Larry Kert, Carol Kane, Sandy Duncan, Eli Wallach, Audra Lindley, Lee Roy Reems, and others.
Designs for other productions of note include my adaptation, in association with Lynn Pecktal, of Edward Gorey's scenery for Dracula, produced by the Cape Playhouse, directed by Ken Elliot and starring Jean Le Clerc; a production of Romeo and Juliette, directed by Cecil McKinnon, produced by Shakespeare and Company and performed with the Buffalo Philharmonic, conducted by Joanne Falletta; and the only production of Yes, There Were Giants created and directed by Richard Sabellico at the Cape Playhouse, starring John Raitt, Kitty Carlisle Hart and Jo Sullivan Loesser, celebrating the music of Rogers and Hammerstein, Moss Hart and Frank Loesser—the production was featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.
I am also the recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards and three Independent Reviewers of New England Awards, am a member of United Scenic Artists local 829, and have been a professor of scene design at New York University, Ithaca College and Boston University. You can view more of my work or contact me through my website.
