Karen Howard
Programme Coordinator / Senior Lecturer for Musical Theatre Triple Threat
About
Karen Howard is a director and producer specialising in Opera and Musical Theatre. She has directed for Scottish Opera at the Theatre Royal Glasgow; Opera North at the Grand Theatre, Leeds and Music Theatre Wales, taking Peter Maxwell-Davis’ The Lighthouse on national tour. Overseas credits include Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde for Scottish Opera at the Sao Carlos Theater, Lisbon; Britten’s Billy Budd for Opera North at De Doelen, Rotterdam and Donizetti’s L’Elisir D’Amore for Opera Hogskolen, Oslo.
She also directed the Musical Theatre world premieres of Kurt Schwertsik’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears for the Roald Dahl Foundation with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall; Rip Van Winkle for the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield and an acclaimed large-scale, multi-media community production, Wife of Kendal with a cast of 200, performed to 2,500 people.
She most recently directed a contemporary adaptation of Bach’s Coffee Cantata, integrating traditional north African music instruments, in a sell-out tour of regional independent coffee shops. Karen trained at LAMDA, is co-founder and Artistic Director of a small-scale touring company, Orange Opera and is a visiting director at the Royal College of Music. She has directed three student productions for the University of Chichester: The Matchgirls, On The Town and her pioneering first Musical Theatre course final year regional tour with Stiles and Drewe’s Honk!