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Creating artistic communities is something that Richard E.T. White does best and it's this skill that keeps outside theater houses asking for more. Take for example his recent work on a new translation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in San Franscisco with a cast of 7 actors. Some actors were strangers to each other; some were not. Richard had only worked with 2 of the 7 before. And, in one case, a character was cast from a videotaped audition and had never met the Director in person before the start of rehearsals! The obvious challenge is to take an unfamiliar group and in just four short weeks create a working community of artists who can come up with a compelling and hopefully fresh interpretation of a classic play.Richard E.T. White once again met this challenge and Hedda Gabler was later described by Robert Hurwitt, Theater Critic at the San Francisco Chronicle as ".....a bold dose of visual adrenaline."

Spoken like the true professional that he is, Richard explains the process this way: "You have to bring your best, most honest self to each rehearsal, access the storehouse of personal experience and encourage everyone else to do likewise. You ground each choice in what you can discern of the intricacies of the textual given circumstances and work like a mutha outside of rehearsal to stay ahead of the game."

When Hedda closed, Richard moved on to Slow Fire, yet another artistic community he helped form back in the 1980s. In collaboration with librettist/performer Rinde Eckert and composer Paul Dresher, Richard co-created Slow Fire which was performed throughout the United States and Europe until its first "retirement" in 1996. Richard reunited with Dresher, Eckert and the rest of the Slow Fire team to present the revival performance that ran at Theater Artaud in San Francisco March 14-18. Under the headline, "20 years later, intense Slow Fire burns bright again," SF Chronicle critic Hurwitt wrote, "Slow Fire hit the mid-1980s with the force of an astonishing, revolutionary instant masterpiece. Two decades later, [Slow Fire] may have lost some of its inspired novelty, but none of its depth, skill and exhilarating impact. If anything, it seems more accessible and immediate than ever."

Now that's staying power: the ultimate outcome of cogent artistic communities. And, Richard has been at it for a long time.

As a sophomore in the 70s at the University of Washington at the height of the Vietnam War, Richard had enrolled in drama classes but he (like so many students at this age who are looking to find their true path as a serious human being) struggled with how to accept this art as something more than just an entertaining avocation. One day on campus he came upon a troupe of actors from the San Francisco Mime Troupe performing Ruzzante Comes Home from the War, a brilliant satire on the current state of affairs in the country. Following this performance was a clever and trenchant puppet show about racial tensions called Little Black Panther. Richard notes, "My head was spinning - you could do this with theatre? You could create something both entertaining and relevant? You could make this kind of a difference to the people watching? It was like a perfect marriage of Bertolt Brecht and Bugs Bunny. I had found my calling."

Years later Richard went to work with artists from the Mime Troupe, collaborating in 1992 on an adaptation of The Marriage of Figaro at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. "It was such a thrill to make that connection real" he says. And, like all good stories, Richard's experience again comes full circle as this version of Figaro has just been published by Dramatists Play Service.

Richard has received 9 Bay Area Theater Critics' Circle Awards and 8 Dramalogue Awards for Outstanding Direction. He has directed at regional theaters throughout the United States and has taught at UC Berkeley, the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival Institute, Drama Studio London at Berkeley, Tokyo's Theatre Company Subaru and of course, Cornish College of the Arts.