David Shepherd (producer)
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David Shepherd (1926-) is an American producer, director, and actor primarily noted for his work in improvisational theatre
Born in New York City to an old money family, Shepherd grew up with left-leaning sensibilities. He studied English at Harvard and received an M.A. in the History of Theater at Columbia. Disenchanted with what he perceived as a european dominated theater on the East coast, Shepherd gravitated to the midwest.[1]
I wanted to rejuvenate the theater. My first love was the theater, which I found had been captured by Giraudoux and Shaw and Ionesco, who would come in and turn it into a distorted picture of life. Instead of being about what's happening in the streets of Chicago, it was about love affairs in Nice which took place fifty years ago. And I thought it was obscene for the theater to be dominated by French and English people. I mean, obscene. I mean, I'm a Yankee. I'm a W.A.S.P.. I want a W.A.S.P. theater, OK? And you can't get it on the East Coast because it's dominated by European culture. So you go to the Midwest, which is what I did.
– David Shepherd, Something Wonderful Right Away
In 1953 Shepherd was one of the co-founders of the Playwrights Theatre Club in Chicago. In 1955 he founded the Compass Players, the forerunner of The Second City. More recently he has been a co-creator of the Canadian Improv Games. In addition to leading workshops in Improvisation, David Shepherd has recently been involved in developing techniques for the creation of improvisational films.
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Sweet, Jeffrey Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City and The Compass Players, 2004, page 2
[edit] Bibliography
- Shepherd, David (2005). That Movie in Your Head: Guide to improvising stories on video. Shutesbury, MA: Gere Publishing, 202 pages. ISBN 0-9743995-0-7.
[edit] Further reading
- Coleman, Janet (1991). The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 362 pages. ISBN 978-0226113456.
- Sweet, Jeffrey (2004). Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City and The Compass Players. Limelight Editions, 386 pages. ISBN 978-0879100735.
