Robert Chapel, Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia Department of Drama.

Bob has been directing plays and musicals since 1968, internationally and nationally in New York, Los Angeles, regional and university theatre.  He is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Virginia Theatre Association at their annual conference in Norfolk, VA in 2016.  He served on UVA’s Drama faculty as a professor from 1990 until 2016, serving also as its chair from 1990 to 2005.  He was with the Heritage Theatre, UVA’s professional summer theatre, since 1987, first as a stage director, then as managing and stage director, and, from 1995-2015, as its producing artistic director.  He holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.  Bob has directed over 140 plays and musicals, has produced over 200 and has acted in over 60 more in New York, Los Angeles, regional, and university theatre. 

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Prior to joining the UVA faculty, he taught and directed at San Diego State University (head of MFA Musical Theatre Program and recipient of an outstanding teaching award), New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (coordinating director of the MFA Musical Theatre Composing and Writing Program), the University of Michigan (head of BFA Musical Theatre Program), and the University of Alabama (assistant professor in Theatre).

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While in New York, he created and produced, with Brooks McNamara, a series of shows out of the Shubert Archive, culminating in Shubert Alley that was performed at the Players Club and the “Performathon” at Lincoln Center.  In addition he has served as artistic director for Music Theatre North in Potsdam, NY.  During a residence in Los Angeles he also received the Drama-Logue Award for his direction of Genet’s The Balcony at the Company of Angels Theatre.  While in Los Angeles and New York, he also acted in a number of films, prime-time television programs and commercials, as well as theatre.

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In 2005-2006 while on sabbatical leave from UVA, Bob taught musical theatre performance at two prestigious acting academies in Moscow, Russia, directed The Laramie Project for the University of Michigan’s Department of Theatre and Drama, and directed She Stoops To Conquer at the University of Tasmania’s School of Visual and Performing Arts in Launceston, Tasmania (Australia).  Having been awarded a Fulbright grant, he returned to Moscow in November 2006 and directed the Russian premiere of Sweeney Todd for the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts at the GITIS Theatre.  In 2007 he returned to Ann Arbor and directed the opening production at the University of Michigan’s new Arthur Miller Theatre, that being Miller’s stage adaptation of his teleplay, Playing For Time.  In December of 2007 he received a Fulbright Emeritus grant to create a Broadway musical revue, Broadway X 3, which he toured to eight cities in Russia, traveling over 6,000 miles over a period of 14 days and, in the spring of 2008, he was summoned back to Moscow by the U.S. Embassy there to give a lecture and teach a workshop in musical theatre performance at an international theatre festival.  In 2014 he was invited back to the University of Michigan to direct Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna in the Power Center for the Performing Arts.  He is a recipient of UVA’s faculty Raven Award for distinguished service to the University over his career.  Bob’s biography is included in Who’s Who In America.