Christopher Edwards

Christopher Edwards has worked as a freelance director, actor, fight choreographer, and educator for the past twenty-five years and is currently the Artistic Director of the award-winning Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston. With an eye towards heightened text that enlightens our shared human existence, he has made a career of bringing contemporary aesthetics to classical works. Much of his work has focused on Shakespeare (he has directed, acted in, and choreographed over 60 productions), heightened texts and stories told through and with the elements of hip-hop and contemporary plays from the African diaspora. Chris always has an eye toward diversity and inclusion in his work and strives to open the possibilities of classical performances to populations of artists and audiences who traditionally have not been invited to be a part of the experience. He also enjoys bringing narratives to the stage of disenfranchised populations.

Chris was the founding Artistic Director of Point of Entry Theater in New York, NY, (an educational theatre dedicated to multi-cultural stories for under-served populations). He worked with the acclaimed Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, where he was a company member, the Associate Artistic Director, the Director of Education, and Professional Apprentice Training. He was the Artistic Director with Nevada Conservatory Theatre at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Professional acting and directing credits include work: Off Broadway, London’s West End, internationally, and in regional theaters throughout the nation. Some of Chris’s favorite plays he has directed include: Fences, Othello, Hamlet, ART, Equivocation, The Three Musketeers, Water by the Spoonful, The Bomb-itty of Errors, How to Break, and Venus in Fur. Some of Chris’s favorite roles he has played on stage include: Richard in Richard III, Caliban in The Tempest, Posthumus in Cymbeline, Macduff in Macbeth, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Morris in The Blood Knot, Derek in A Mouthful of Birds, Simon in Snatch, and Luciana in The Bomb-itty of Errors amongst others.

As an educator, Chris has taught at Boston University, Tufts University, Boston College, Montclaire State University, Bennington College, West Point Military Academy, St Michaels College, University of Minnesota, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Chris is a member of the Actors Equity Association and has served on the Executive Committee of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, granting panels for the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and currently is in the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Programs cohort.