“Good storytelling is a sort of fearless magic act, in which events move too quickly to tolerate objection… And this is the way that director Randy Baker and the rest of the Rorschach troupe tell this story: with such assurance and commitment that the impossible seems true.” – DC Theater Scene
Randy Baker is an award-winning playwright and director, and the co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre in Washington DC, which he founded with Jenny McConnell Frederick in the summer of 1999. He is also adjunct faculty at George Washington University and a frequent guest artist and educator at a number of institutions including Theatre Lab, National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and Imagination Stage. He is an alumni of the inaugural cohort of The Playwright’s Arena, a part of Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute and recently ended his tenure as the Washington DC regional rep for the Dramatists Guild of America.
Current projects include directing the upcoming world-premiere of Human Museum by Miyoko Conley at Rorschach Theatre as well as the continued development of The Legend of Hang Tuah (A Malay epic with martial arts and shadow puppetry, developed in collaboration with Malay and Singaporean artists). Rorschach Theatre‘s 25th anniversary season is currently underway.
As a director with Rorschach Theatre he has directed Very Still and Hard to See (nominated for five Helen Hayes awards including Best Director), The Electric Baby, She Kills Monsters (and the 2019 site-specific remount), Chemical Exile: Synthesis, The Minotaur, After the Quake, 1001, Rhinoceros, JB, Behold!, Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards and Monster. Some recent projects outside of Rorschach include the seven-room living installation piece, Hello, My Name Is… at The Welders (nominated for three Helen Hayes awards including Best Director), a shadow puppet gamelan-inspired A Midsummer Night’s Dream at WSC Avant Bard, Big Love at Catholic University, Anon/ymous at Georgetown University and Marat/Sade and his own adaptation of Rashōmon at American University. Some of the other companies where he has directed include The Source Festival, WSC Avant Bard, Pointless Theatre, The Welders, Inkwell Theatre, Breakout Theatre, KL Shakespeare Players (Malaysia), First Draft, NCDA’s Actors Repertory Theatre, Wayward Theatre, Cherry Red Productions, Catholic University, American University, Georgetown University and Young Playwrights Theater as well as a number of shows with teen actors at Imagination Stage and Theatre Lab.
Readings and workshops of plays include the ongoing development of The Legend of Hang Tuah which was originally commissioned and developed by Pointless Theatre, and had subsequent workshops in Singapore with Nusantara Theatrics and in Malaysia with the KL Shakespeare Players in collaboration with Masakini Theatre; The Burning Road which was developed at Arena stage and had a reading in the Kogod Cradle; Forgotten Kingdoms which has received readings at National New Play Network, Kennedy Center Page to Stage festival, Inkwell Theatre, The Arts Club of Washington, Jakarta Players (Indonesia), Wordsmyth Theater (Houston) and the National Newborn Festival at MTWorks (New York) where it won the Audience Choice Award; Monastery which was developed through Theater J’s Locally Grown program and received a public reading; Circus of Fallen Angels which was commissioned by and performed at the National Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and received a workshop production at American University; Gilgamesh which received a staged reading at Rorschach Theatre and Vox which was developed at Theater Alliance.
The son of educators and the grandson of Pentecostal missionaries, Randy grew up overseas, mostly in Singapore and Malaysia where his family still lives. He attended the University of Richmond before moving to Washington DC in 1997 and currently lives in Takoma Park. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College.
More information can be found at randybakerdc.com.
