Casey Childs

Summary

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Casey Childs is an American theater director and the founder of Primary Stages, a non-profit off-Broadway theater company in New York City. Since 1984, the company has produced new plays, many directed by Childs.

In 2008, Primary Stages received a Lucille Lortel Award for its Outstanding Body of Work. Carnegie Mellon University awarded Childs their Commitment to Playwrights Award in 1995. From 1982 until 1985, Childs was the Artistic Programs Director for New Dramatists, America's oldest playwrights' organization, where he conducted workshops for playwrights in developing new works.

Childs spent four seasons directing staged readings of new plays for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Conference. Two of the media scripts he directed there, Jacob Aaron Estes' Mean Creek and Eric John Litra's The Nickel Children, were later produced as feature films.

Regionally, Childs has directed Sexual Perversity in Chicago at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, The Magnificent Cuckold for the Metro Theater Company and the Pittsburgh Museum of Art, and Gym Rats, a staged reading co-produced by New Dramatists and the McDonald's corporation.

For television, he produced A. R. Gurney's Far East, directed by Daniel Sullivan for the Stage on Screen series for WNET/PBS. He has produced and/or directed network television over thirty years and has worked on shows including The Young and the Restless" and As the World Turns for CBS, Hollywood Heights for Sony Pictures, Another World for NBC and Loving, The City, One Life to Live, All My Children and segments of Spin City for ABC. He was the senior producer for All My Children for several years. He has also worked on shows for Turner Broadcasting and Lifetime. He won two Emmy Awards for his television directing.

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in acting and an MFA in directing, Childs has acted and/or directed for the Metro Stage Company in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia Festival of New Plays, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Edinburgh Festival and New Dramatists.

At Primary Stages, he launched the Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA), a training institution for playwrights, actors, and directors. Primary Stages also teamed with Fordham University to create the Fordham/Primary Stages MFA in Playwriting Program. Childs has taught and/or guest lectured on television and theater at Yale, Ithaca College, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Stone Street Studios (New York University), the University of California in San Diego and the University of Georgia in Athens, Pratt Institute, and the American University in Cairo, Skidmore and the University of South Florida in Tampa. He made three trips to Russia as a guest of the Federation of Russian Theatre Workers and directed Will Dunn's Hotel Desperado in 1997 as part of an exchange between the O'Neill Theater Conference and the Shelakova Playwrights Festival.

Childs has been on theater panels for the Pennsylvania State Arts Council and the Affiliated Artists. He was a panelist and site evaluator for the Pew Charitable Trusts Philadelphia Theater Initiative. He was a governor for two years for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences New York Chapter, where he headed the Critical Viewing Committee. He has served on the East Coast Directors' Council of the Directors Guild of America and was a Vice President of the DGA's National Board for four years. He was the Vice President of the original board for LMDA, the Literary Managers and Dramaturges of America. He is a member of Actors' Equity, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and the Directors Guild of America.

In 2020, the Actors Fund documented his life's work as part of their Performing Arts Legacy Project.

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