Ted Sperling Named Director of The Musical Theater Initiative at The Public

Ted Sperling has joined The Public as Director of The Musical Theater Initiative.  Sperling has a long history with The Public. His first show in New York as a musical director was at The Public: Romance in Hard Times under Joe Papp. Since then he has worked under George Wolfe on Saturn Returns and, more recently, Oskar Eustis on See What I Wanna See. 

Ted Sperling won the 2005 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his orchestrations of The Light in the Piazza, for which he was also music director. Other Broadway and off-Broadway credits as music director include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Full Monty, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Kiss of the Spider Woman, My Favorite Year, A Man of No Importance, Wise Guys, A New Brain, Saturn Returns, and Floyd Collins. His next project as music director will be South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theater.  Mr. Sperling made his professional acting debut as an original cast member of the Broadway musical Titanic, playing the role of Wallace Hartley, the ship's bandleader.  Mr. Sperling's work as a stage director includes the off-Broadway productions of Striking 12 and See What I Wanna See. In Philadelphia, he directed the world premiere of the musical Charlotte: Life? Or Theater?, and a revival of Lady in the Dark, starring Andrea Marcovicci. He has conducted the scores for the films The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep,and Everything Is Illuminated, starring Elijah Wood and directed by Liev Schreiber. He directed the short musical film Love, Mom, starring Tonya Pinkins, which was shown in five international festivals.  Mr. Sperling also has an active concert career. As soprano Audra McDonald's music director since 1999, he has conducted the New York Philharmonic in a live TV broadcast for New Year's Eve, as well as performances of "La Voix Humaine" at the Houston Grand Opera. Mr. Sperling has performed in all the great concert halls of America, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Disney Hall, as well as in London and Paris. 

The Public Theatre (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Mara Manus, Executive Director) was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, productions of Shakespeare, and other classics at its headquarters on Lafayette Street and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.  The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through its extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 40 Tony Awards, 141 Obies, 39 Drama Desk Awards, 23 Lucille Lortel Awards and 4 Pulitzer Prizes.

Ted Sperling