ABOUT KEN
Ken Savage is a first-generation, queer, Asian American producer, director, events curator, fundraiser, and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay Area/Napa. He currently is the Event Producer for Festival Napa Valley, a classical music organization that produces top-notch music, food, and wine events all throughout Napa Valley and the Bay Area.
Previously, was the Associate Producer of Innovation & Strategy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he produced mainstage plays and managed digital projects including VR storytelling experiments, short films, filming and livestreaming of mainstage shows, and other new media work. He also was the Associate Producer at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) where he has produced over 50 shows for the mainstage, MFA program, and Young Conservatory over the last 5 years ranging from classics to new plays to musicals and A.C.T.’s annual New Strands Festival. He has led various initiatives to build demand for new audiences, including the A.C.T. Asian stARTup Council whose goal is to bridge the Asian American artist and tech communities in the Bay Area. Ken was also a director in A.C.T.'s Master in Fine Arts Acting Program and a musical theater faculty member in the Young Conservatory.
His favorite musical theater directing credits include: Transfers (Crowded Fire), Tinderella (Custom Made/Faultline Theater), Spring Awakening (Stanford University director-in-residence), Sweeney Todd set in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood (SFBATCO), My Fair Lady (Broadway By the Bay), Sunday in the Park with George, Company, The Fantasticks, The Last Five Years, and the blockbuster hit Hairspray, which broke box office records selling over 6,000 tickets over two weekends and selling out Stanford's 1,600-seat Memorial Auditorium.
From 2012-2014 he served as the Artistic Director of Stanford Asian American Theater Project (AATP) founded in 1978 by playwright David Henry Hwang. In 2014 he produced and directed an Asian re-imagination of the classic Broadway musical My Fair Lady, which was the inaugural musical in Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall. For his production of My Fair Lady, Ken was awarded with the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts, the Stanford Asian American Special Achievement Award, and the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education-- the highest honor given to two graduating seniors. In 2015 Ken received the Silicon Valley Creates Artist Laureate Emerging Artist Award.
Professionally he has worked at Arena Stage in Washington D.C., The Public Theater, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, CalShakes, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Playwrights Foundation. He is the co-creator of Gravity, a New(tonian) Musical, which was honored as a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Music Theater Conference (2017) and which Ken directed a workshop for the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley New Works Festival (2016).
Ken is a graduate of Stanford University– B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies with Honors and M.A. in Communication with a concentration in virtual reality and theater.
Director's Statement
"I am passionate about creating brave spaces for new artists of all backgrounds to challenge and expand the landscape of the American theatre. As a freelance director I am excited about re-imaginations of classic narratives and developing new plays and musicals that center BIPOC, queer, women, and gender non-binary relationships. Ham drawn to plays with muscular text, messy relationships, and opportunities that showcase the physical, emotional, and musical virtuosity of actors. I love working with actors. I love mining intentional choices and actions from the text. And I love finding new relevance to stories with a diverse team of wicked smart and open-hearted collaborators that want to create more radical, surprising, and entertaining experiences for audiences to practice empathy."
