Chuck Hudson
Based in New York City, stage director Chuck Hudson has directed opera productions at major international companies, including Cape Town Opera (South Africa), Cincinnati Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, Sacramento Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Opera Cleveland, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera Center, Wolf Trap Opera, and Opera Santa Barbara, among others. He has directed award winning theater productions in New York and regionally, including The Pearl Theatre, The Chester Theater, Cape May Stage, The Children’s Theatre Festival of Houston, New City Theatre, and Chicago’s Fox Valley Shakespeare Festival. Chuck’s work as a director was mentioned in the January 2011 edition of American Theatre magazine.
In addition to directing professional artists, Chuck continues to focus on his work with artists in training. He was a co-creator of Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program, where he directed productions as well as created and instructed specialized classes on acting and movement for singers. Chuck has directed productions at San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Santa Fe Opera’s Apprentice Artist Program, Florida Grand Opera’s Resident Artist Program, IU Opera Theatre, CCM Opera Theatre, AVA Opera Theater, BU Opera Institute, USC – Thornton Opera, Music Academy of the West, Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, Carnegie Mellon Opera Theatre, and Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater. He was a guest professor of advanced acting at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, a professor at the University of Houston School of Theatre, at Cornish College of the Arts, and was an annual adjunct faculty artist at North Carolina School of the Arts Theatre Department and Fletcher Opera Institute, at Westminster Choir College, and was a Schmidbauer Guest Artist–Stage Director at Stephen F. Austin University’s Theater Department. Chuck also uses his enormous experience as a performer, director, and coach in his many master classes and private coachings at various professional artist training programs for singers and actors. He is also in great demand as a private audition coach in New York City, coaching both opera and musical theater performers.
For seven years, Chuck was the artistic director of the Immediate Theatre in Seattle, a physically based company committed to the creation of visually exciting dramatic works. Chuck’s specialty in movement comes from a background in gymnastics as well as being one of three Americans to have received a diploma from the Marcel Marceau International School of Mimedrama in Paris. He is the only American to be appointed to teach at Marceau’s School, and he performed with Marceau on his 1991 European Tour and in Klaus Kinski’s film Paganini. Chuck also studied at the Paris School for Theatrical Fencing and was awarded an Honorary Diploma from the French Academy of Arms.
Acting roles include Orsino in Twelfth Night, Brutus in Julius Caesar, and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew with the Seattle Shakespeare Festival, and Caliban in The Tempest with his own Immediate Theatre.
