About

“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 tells this story: with such assurance and commitment that the impossible seems true.” – DC Theater Scene

Randy Baker is an award-winning playwright, director and 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 and recent projects include directing the The Figs at Rorschach Theatre, helping to create Vox Populi, Rorschach’s latest Psychogeographies project, and 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 26th anniversary season is currently underway.

As a director with Rorschach Theatre he has directed The Figs, Human Museum, 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, 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.

Plays he has written and had produced at Rorschach Theatre include Forgotten Kingdoms (2017), a play about a missionary in Indonesia whose life is changed forever in one supernatural night while he tries to convert a man who will not be converted; Truth & Beauty Bombs: A Softer World a project co-written with four other playwrights and inspired by the web comic A Softer World; the full-length plays Dream Sailors and After the Flood; as well as a number of short plays. Also at Rorschach Theatre he collaborated with multiple artists at Rorschach Theatre to create the groundbreaking city-wide immersive “Psychogeographies” projects, Distance Frequencies and Chemical Exile as well as

the two found space projects Thesmophoria (2016) and Six Impossible Things (2014).

Other produced plays include the full length plays Circus of Fallen Angels at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, wild42hold at George Washington University, an adaptation of Rashōmon at American University as well as a number of short plays at numerous other theatres. Two plays written for teen actors were developed and produced for Theatre Lab including Between Days – a play about American expat teens growing up in Singapore – and Medea: A Teenage Revenge Tragedy.

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; Gilgamesh which received a staged reading at Rorschach Theatre; Vox which was developed at Theater Alliance; and Rashōmon’s Gate which received a staged reading at Spooky Action Theatre

His directing has been nominated twice for Helen Hayes awards and Rorschach Theatre has been nominated for over twenty Helen Hayes awards. He won a Mary Goldwater award for his creative and producer work with Rorschach Theatre and the 2012 Larry Neal Writers’ Award.

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.

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FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS 2 . DJ Corey Photography

PRESS

“It’s strong, stirring stuff—a modern fable with an oblique moral. It enchants us like a dream and kicks like a nightmare.” – Washington City Paper (About After the Quake, 2011: Directing)

Very Still and Hard to See / PHOTO: C. Stanley Photography

VERY STILL AND HARD TO SEE Photo: C. Stan Photography

“The play opens with one of the most masterfully atmospheric sequences I’ve witnessed in a DC theater. Beneath droning 1940’s swing and eerie lighting, the audience finds itself surrounded by masked ghouls shambling across the stage with mannequin-like stiffness. Baker and his design team blend the terror of white-masked intruders from films like Funny Games with the jerky, unnerving movement of Japanese movie ghosts; the whole setup is a horror fan’s dream. very still & hard to see is an immersive carousel of horrors that will have you checking the locks and looking under the bed. Just remember: there’s no shame in sleeping with the lights on. — DC Theatre Scene (About Very Still and Hard to See, 2015: Directing)

Truth & Beauty Bombs lights the world on fire and dances in the flames. It destroys preconceived notions and offers a new, poetic language for philosophical discussions of life and death.” – DC Theatre Scene (About Truth & Beauty Bombs: A Softer World, 2015: Playwriting)

“Extraordinarily ambitious… Staged inside Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Theatre Lab, the action takes place both inside and outside a circle of seats where the audience sits. The walls are covered in a maze of brown string and bare light bulbs occasionally flicker overhead… The universally strong performances and the heady concepts of desire, self-control, and fate make this an absorbing and inventive work.” – The Washingtonian (About The Minotaur, 2013: Directing)

“Those details pay off when Puck morphs from a shadow into a three-dimensional sprite who bears a distinct resemblance to the two-dimensional version. The likeness between silhouette and humanoid is one of many rewarding touches in director Randy Baker’s beautiful production.” –Washington Post (About A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2016: Directing)

“Forgotten Kingdoms touches on such themes as culture clash, the legacy of colonialism and competition among religions, but it is far from an issue play. Bold and often poignant, the work extends an appealingly personal and idiosyncratic vision, rich in telling detail. The title may reference forgetting, but the play often seems as clear and specific as a total-recall memory.” – Washington Post (About Forgotten Kingdoms, 2017: Playwriting)