John Duncan is the Artistic Director of
the Twilight Repertory Theatre. He also directed two of the first
three productions for the company,
Extremities
and
Off
Book. He served as stage manager for
She
Stoops to Conquer
and is currently directing
Arms
and the Man.
When not working with TRT, John teaches
theatre arts at Portland Community College and is a member of the
improv comedy group the Light-Fingered Five
In twenty years in the theatre, John
has been an actor, director, playwright, stage manager, producer, and
has served in nearly every other position possible in the theatre. He
began in the theatre in Eugene, Oregon, where he became a producing
partner and principal director for the Cascade Balzac Theatre
Company. With Cascade Balzac he directed or acted in
The
Public
Eye, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, Murder at the Howard Johnsons,
and
his own original audience participation comedy whodunit,
Death
of
a Gelophiliac among many others. In the 1980s he appeared in
about 20 plays and directed half a dozen.
John left the theatre in the nineties
to raise his two boys. He returned to the theatre in 1999, when he
enrolled as a graduate student at Portland State, where he earned an
MS in Theatre Arts in 2002. At that time he partnered with Max Blond
in producing
Master Harold and the boys as the
first play
produced at the West End Theatre in Portland.
In 2006 John joined with Aimé Kelly
in forming the New Group Theatre Company, which produced three plays
over the next year. In 2008 the company changed its name to the
Twilight Repertory Theatre and John became its Artistic Director.
Twilight Repertory Theatre rehearses in
John’s garage. For the first year they rehearsed under the watchful
eye of his black lab, Tammy, who alas shuffled off this mortal coil
at the tender age of 17 in 2008. She is missed by the entire company,
even though she flatly refused to laugh at their comedy. The company
is currently looking for a new dog with a better sense of humor.
