Home 3

About Me

Justin directing mezzo-soprano Cherry Duke (Hänsel) and soprano Kellie Rumba-Rattay (Gretel) at rehearsal. photo by Jorge Salgado for El Paso Inc. magazine

BACKGROUND:
Justin trained in London at the University of Essex's East 15 Acting School (rated in 2012 as "Top Drama School in the U.K."; and again in 2018 by The Times Good University Guide; also named the 2018 "University of the Year") earning an MFA in Theatre Directing with Distinction.
He is the Artistic Director El Paso Opera, which just completed its 25th season with a bang! He is Co-Founding Artistic Director of New Mexico-based Scaffolding Theatre Company, profiled by Playbill magazine as "daring" and "innovative."

NEXT UP FOR JUSTIN:

Justin is beyond excited to announce that starting in the Fall of 2019, he will join the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University's legendary School of Drama as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Directing.

WHAT HAS JUSTIN BEEN UP TO?:

In the two years leading up to this new faculty appointment at CMU, he was the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Visiting Fellow in Directing and Theatre Studies at the University of Houston's Katherine G. McGovern College of the Arts' School of Theatre and Dance, where he taught courses in advanced directing, theatre education, and collective creation, and directed for the mainstage season of plays and 10-Minute Play Festival,

Justin's year also included a follow-up to last year's sold-out run of El Paso Opera's new production of Engelbert Humperdinck's classic opera Hänsel & Gretel (it was staged in-the-round at the historical Union Depot train station in downtown El Paso and featured the talents of artists with local ties, especially women both on and off the stage... Read about the production here), Justin staged Mozart's The Magic Flute: In Concert at the El Paso Scottish Rite Temple Theater - a Masonic opera in a Masonic temple!

Read more about Justin here, including a theatrical/directing philosophy.

This summer... Justin staged two shows!
First a Young Artist Program production of Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, the closing show of El Paso Opera's 25th anniversary season, and its offering to the global celebration of Bernstein's birthday centennial, #BernsteinAt100. And after glorious productions of Cole Porter's Anything Goes and Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece South Pacific, Justin returned to the UTEP Dinner Theatre (America's only year-round college campus dinner theatre) to be Guest Director for their summer production of Hello, Dolly!, which performed July 5 through 20 to raves.

OTHER CREDITS:
Justin is the recipient of a 2016 FAIR Directing Assistantship at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, having worked on their flagship production of Hamlet (dir. Lisa Peterson) for their Shakespeare 400 season, a 2015 SDCF (Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation) Observership, with master artist Art Manke on South Coast Repertory's (Los Angeles) Peter and the Starcatcher, and a 2014-2015 Directing Fellowship with Asolo Repertory Theatre (Florida), having assisted directors Frank Galati, Peter Amster and Michael Donald Edwards on Both Your Houses, The Matchmaker and Our Betters, respectively; and a Directing Attachment at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre (London's West End) under Artistic Director Timothy Sheader on Crazy for You, the 2012 Olivier Award® winner for Best Musical Revival and Lord of the Flies,

Other London credits: Spring's Awakening by Frank Wedekind (Director), Hechos consumados at Theatre 503, Off-West End (premiere staged reading; Director), The Two Most Perfect Things at Jermyn Street Theatre, Off-West End (UK premiere; Assistant Director), Othello at the Blue Elephant (WINNER: 2011 Broadwayworld.com Award for Best Fringe Production; Assistant Director/Composer).

Other El Paso credits: Verdi's Requiem: Resistence & Redemption at Terezin at the historic Plaza Theatre (El Paso Symphony Orchestra & El Paso Holocaust Museum co-production; Stage Director), Marriage of Figaro, Barber of Seville, La Bohème, How Green Was My Valley, Carmen at Magoffin Auditorium and the Abraham Chavez Theatre (El Paso Opera; Assistant Stage Director, Director of Youth Programs), There Is Nothing Like a Diva, annual Holiday Revels (University of Texas at El Paso; Guest Artist-in-Residence/Guest Director), "Opera Bhutan"-Handel's Acis & Galatea (history-making world premiere & later U.S. premiere/revival of the Smithsonian Institute's co-production with the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan; Assistant Stage Director)

Scaffolding Theatre Company (Las Cruces, New Mexico) credits: Nine the musical (Director) and Chicago the musical (Director/Co-Musical Director) at New Mexico State University Center for the Art's Mark & Stephanie Medoff Theatre; Passion the musical (Director) at Doña Ana Arts Council's Rio Grande Theatre; and Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a three-city tour of Las Cruces' NMSU CFTA, El Paso's Philanthropy Theatre, selected as a part of the Jewel Box Series, and to-date, the best-selling production in its history; and Socorro's New Mexico Tech Performing Arts Series.

Proud Associate Member of SDC (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society); former student member of Equity UK and Directors Guild of Great Britain