Hartt's FONTE to Chair U of Miami Theatre Arts Program

The Hartt School's Director of New Play Development and Professor of Theatre Henry Fonte has been appointed Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and Producing Artistic Director of The Jerry Herman Ring Theatre at the University of Miami (FL), effective August 1. Fonte, who departs Hartt on May 17, after twelve years as part of the Theatre Division's faculty, will direct the Dramatic Writing Workshop at New Noises Studio at the Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp (CO), and the musical Into the Woods at Intermezzo Festival in Portland, ME, prior to assuming his new role at Miami.

Fonte was instrumental in development of the current Actor Training and Music Theatre programs at The Hartt School and also founded the New Works Program at Hartt. He has directed many Hartt productions and produced more than 30 new plays and musicals, many of which also were produced across the country. The final new work Fonte helped bring to the Hartt stage, Band Geeks!, receives its professional premiere at Goodspeed Musicals' Norma Terris Theatre May 13 through June 6, 2010. Fonte also was the first University representative to sit on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance of Music Theatre, and helped forgEd Hartt's unique Partnership-in-Training with the renowned Goodspeed Musicals organization. Fonte won the University's Outstanding Teacher Award in 2002. With Fonte's departure, Hartt will bring a number of guest artists from the professional theatre to teach at Hartt over the coming year. Director Michael Montel returns to Hartt and will teach Scene to Song. Casting director Pat McCorkle will help teach the Career Preparation course. Actors and directors Terry Layman and Michael John McGann also return to Hartt to direct and teach. Hartt will announce additional Theatre Division guest artists during the summer months.

Henry Fonte holds an M.A.T. in Theatre from the University of Florida, and is an actor, director, and playwright with thirty years of experience in the professional theatre. He has acted Off-Broadway and in regional theatres (including American Stage, The Folger, and Arena Stage in DC). As a director, he has devoted much of his career to the development of new works for the American Theatre, and has been responsible for numerous world and New York premieres including: Inside Out, Blue Skies Forever, The Rivers and Ravines, Anima Mundi, The Best of Sex and Violence, and Frontiers (all Off-Broadway); The Garden of Hannah List (Florida Stage, later Off-Broadway), and Baptized to the Bone at WaterTower Theatre in Dallas. He also has directed many revivals in a variety of venues ranging from The Village Theatre in New York, where he was resident director from 1988 to 1994, and Saratoga Shakespeare Company, where he recently directed Romeo and Juliet, to Starlight Musicals in Indianapolis, where he staged major musical revivals such as Kiss Me Kate, starring Tony winner Judy Kaye. ?? Fonte's produced works include new American acting versions of Chekhov's farces titled The Doctor's Lighter Side and Cinderella: The True Story (the book to a new musical), and his new play Eye of the Beholder, which received a staged reading in Los Angeles, starring Timothy Busfield and Sharon Gless. He has participated in The New Harmony Project, where he directed a workshop production of Battleship Potemkin, which later had its world premiere under his direction at The Hartt School. He was founding director of The Hartt School's New Works Program, where he produced sixteen new plays and fourteen new musicals, the latest of which, Band Geeks!, is having its world premiere at Goodspeed Musicals this Thursday, May 13. For his entire tenure, Professor Fonte was The Hartt School's representative to the National Alliance for Music Theatre, the service organization for professional musical theatre producers. Not only was he instrumental in The Hartt School being one of the first educational institutions invited to join, but also was the first representative from an educational institution to serve on its board of directors. He has won the Corbin Patrick award for excellence in direction, and his Cinderella: The True Story was published by Samuel French, Inc. He was the director of the world premiere of Justice, an opera by Pulitzer Prize-laureate Roger Reynolds. The opera was commissioned by the Library of Congress and was premiered in the Library's Great Hall in Washington, DC. The Hartt School is the comprehensive performing arts conservatory of the University of Hartford that offers innovative degree programs in music, dance, and theatre. With more than 400 concerts, recitals, plays, master classes, dance performances, and musical theatre productions a year, performance is central to Hartt's curriculum. For more information on The Hartt School, visit www.hartford.edu/hartt.

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