Please click on my Appointments Calendar to make an appointment with me.  Currently, I am holding all one-on-one meetings via zoom.  After you make an appointment, I will attach a zoom link to the calendar event.

Ron's Appointment Calendar

Ron Bashford has directed more than ninety theater productions and multimedia projects, from traditional play scripts to collaborations with composers and choreographers.  

Comfortable with a wide variety of dramatic writing, Ron has done a significant body of work for Asheville’s North Carolina Stage Company, including plays by Shakespeare, Caryl Churchill, Yasmina Resa, and Joe Orton.  Ron has also directed for LA’s Independent Shakespeare Company, Syracuse Stage, Capitol Rep, Vermont Stage, Two River Theater Company, Immediate Theater Project, North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, and the Hangar Theatre, among others.  In New York City, Ron’s work has been seen at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Theatre 80 St. Marks, Ohio Theatre, Joe’s Pub, The Knitting Factory, and the Houseman Theater.

Most recently Ron directed the world premiere of Emily & Sue, an cappella pop opera in Amherst, and also directed a film version at the Emily Dickinson Homestead in collaboration with Four/Ten Media. Other recent work includes My Evil Twin, a new cabaret musical, at Boston Center for the Arts and the Rochester Fringe Festival, and The Scarlett Professor at the Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts.  Working closely with actor-collaborators, Ron has also recently co-created Seven Devils and A French Nunwith actor Carine Montbertrand, Burden with actor Willey Repoley, and a five-actor theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles for North Carolina Stage Company.  Ron’s production of Much Ado About Nothing for Independent Shakespeare Company, was nominated by the Los Angeles Times as a "Critic's Choice." 

Among projects for Sequitur, the New York-based, new music ensemble, Ron has directed Ernst Toller: Requiem for an Idea (Joyce Soho); David Lang’s Music for Gracious Living; Sam Shepard’s Tongues (Merkin Hall); Money: A Cabaret (Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre); and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall).

Ron is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, where he conducted an experimental workshop of Macbeth in 2008.  A year earlier he directed a National Endowment for The Arts/Shakespeare-in-American-Communities touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for schools in Western North Carolina.  Awards include The Mountain Express Reader's Choice Awards for Best Productions for Hamlet and for Hedwig and the Angry Inch (NC Stage), and the Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition Awards for Best Production and Best Director of a Musical for The Secret Garden (Clarence Brown Theatre Company).  In 2001 and 2003, he served as assistant director to British director Michael Bogdanov on the development of a new musical, Lone Star Love (Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critic's Circle Award nominations).  Also in 2001, he was invited to create Hamlet Trio for Southwestern University's Brown Symposium: Shakespeares!!, where he was a featured panelist along with Patsy Rodenberg, Head of Voice at Britain’s Royal National Theatre, and Stephen Greenblatt, editor of the Norton Shakespeare.  Before coming to Amherst, he was co-chair of the Theatre Department at Warren Wilson College, known for its integrative program of academics, work and service.

At Amherst College, Ron has directed The Puddle Jumping Society, Medea, Antigone, Send Him Home, The Cherry Orchard , The Other Side, Cymbeline, Yes!, 2 Washington Square, and Exit The King. He also appeared as a performer with dancer Paul Matteson in Wendy Woodson's dance/theater work, Waypoint.  In 2023, he will direct Myths and Hymns by Adam Guettel.

Ron earned a B.A. in music from Amherst College (1988) and an M.F.A. in acting from the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program (1992), and completed additional study at Williamstown Theater Festival, National Shakespeare Conservatory, Harvard/A.R.T., City of London University, and Movement Theater Studio in New York City.