James Larson

Larson retired in 2012 after an outstanding 28 year career as the artistic director the Omaha Theater Company for Young People. He came to Omaha in 1984 from New York, where he had been Associate Professor of Theater at New York University and Director of Educational Theater at NYU. As an actor, he had also toured coast-to-coast with Megan Terry's Magic Theatre.

He took the Omaha company, then known at the Emmy Gifford Children's Theater, from its home in an old movie house at 35th and Center streets to the Astro Theater, a historic and much larger and more attractive venue, restored and renamed the Rose Theater after renovation in 1995. Along the way, the company was renamed the Omaha Theater Company for Young People and grew its yearly budget to some 3 million dollars. Larson established the educational, touring and multicultural programs that grounded the success of the company. He brought the most distinguished actors, playwrights and productions of American educational theater to Omaha. Under his direction, the Omaha Theater Company received the highest award of educational theater, the Sara Spencer Artistic Achievement Award, and the Nebraska Governor's Organizational Achievement Award.

Places Lived

New York, NY
Omaha, NE

Author Of

Fiction
Play/Screenplay

Keywords

Stage Plays; Children's Literature; Children's Theater; Actors and Actresses; Educational Theater; Stage Direction and Directors

Education

Ph.D. in Theater, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Occupation

Artistic Director
Playwright
Author

Honors

Kilty Kane award, as theater student, University of Kansas

Associations

Zbigniew Cynkutis, teacher
Megan Terry

Bibliography

"A" Is for the Alchemist: A Winnie and Winslow Adventure. 2014.

Articles in American Theater and Stage Directions among others.

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