Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter directed the premiere of Love Loss and What I Wore (writ. Nora & Delia Ephron). The play was a smash hit, broke box office records, won the Drama Desk Award for “Best Unique Theatrical Experience,” and ran a record three years Off-Broadway, featuring rotating celebrity casts. Karen directed 150+ celebrated comediennes in the show (such as Rosie O’Donnell, Jane Lynch, Marlo Thomas, Fran Drescher, Rhea Perlman, Natasha Lyonne, Kate Mulgrew, Kristin Chenoweth, Caroline Rhea, Janeane Garofolo). The show is now enjoyed worldwide, and additional companies have played throughout the U.S. Karen is the Artistic Director of the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas, and produces its annual Inge Festival, which honors a singular Playwright for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater. She has directed Lifetime Achievement tributes to David Henry Hwang, Arthur Kopit, Donald Margulies, and the 100th Birthday Tribute to William Inge, Farther Off From Heaven. She has also directed developmental readings of many Playwrights in Residence. In 2009, the Inge Foundation commissioned her to curate and direct an evening of previously unproduced short works by William Inge, which she entitled Inge: Complex, featuring the world premieres of five of his “lost” one-acts in conjunction with their first publication.

Her stage work includes the Off-Broadway and West Coast premieres of New York Times Critic’s Pick Handle with Care (writ. Jason Odell Williams), The Wizard of Oz (Surflight Theater), Witnessed by the World (59E59), The Vagina Monologues (Bucks County Playhouse), and Admit One (writ. Wendy Yondorf, NJ Rep). She directed Michael Keaton in The 24HR Plays for the Festival de Sole (Napa), Kelly Bishop and Beth Fowler in Steel Magnolias (Paper Mill Playhouse), premiered Rosemary Loar’s fractured-fairytale rock musical, Spoolie Girl, for the Midtown International Theater Festival, and Mary Walsh’s Dancing With Rage. For five seasons, Karen was Associate Artistic Director of the Tony-winning Old Globe Theater, where she served as Artistic Producer for over forty plays and musicals by many theatrical luminaries (such as Arthur Miller, Tom Stoppard, Marvin Hamlisch, Jack O’Brien, Dan Sullivan, Mark Lamos, Stephen Wadsworth, John Rando, Henry Krieger, Nora Ephron), all featuring a roster of renowned actors (such as Ellen Burstyn, Dana Delaney, Cherry Jones, Swoosie Kurtz, John Lithgow). Her own most noteworthy Old Globe productions were the American premiere of Abi Morgan’s Splendour (LA Times Critic’s Choice), Nilo Cruz’s Two Sisters and a Piano (LA Times Critic’s Choice), Jeffrey Hatcher’s Smash (Patté Award), and Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (Craig Noel Award, The Reader’s “Best Bet”). Her production of As You Like It for the Old Globe was named “Best of the Year” by San Diego Magazine.

For her events company, The Figment Factory, she has directed Dazzle the District, an outdoor spectacle for Playhouse Square revealing the largest outdoor chandelier in the world (feat. cast of 365 Clevelanders), as well as the launch of the Million Women’s Heart Project: Take Heart, with Donna Karan and a panel of women at the forefront of producing innovative media and news journalism (including Deborah Roberts, Ali Wentworth, Pat Mitchell, Joni Evans). Karen was Line Producer for Moët-Hennessey’s first Louis Vuitton Car Show at Rockefeller Center, President Clinton’s inaugural Clinton Global Initiative, and the PBS Festival of Teaching & Learning with the original presentation of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. She conceived and directed the launch of the UN and WHO global campaign, “Deliver Now for Women and Children,” featuring Chaka Kahn and Ricki Lake in Bryant Park. In her early career, Karen was Production Stage Manager on Broadway for the premieres of Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running, and musicals such as Les Misérables and Sunset Boulevard. She subsequently chaired the MFA Stage Management program for Yale Drama, where she managed the premieres of John Guare, Suzan Lori Parks, and Jeffrey Hatcher (among others) for the Yale Repertory Theater. In 2010, Boston University's School of Theatre Arts established the Karen Carpenter Award for Excellence in Theatre Arts, given annually to a graduating student of exceptional merit. She has taught masterclasses in directing, stage management and producing in colleges across the country, and is authoring a book on these subjects, entitled Enabling Creativity: Philosophy and Practice.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore | Off-Broadway

Handle with Care | Off-Broadway | NYT Critic’s Pick

Steel Magnolias | Paper Mill Playhouse