SCOTT KLAVAN - BIO
In 2019, Scott directed a 60 mins. pilot production of Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine’s classic musical Into The Woods, cast solely with senior actors; a co-production of Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and Music Theatre International (MTI). Stephen Sondheim visited a rehearsal and the project was covered in a feature in the NY Times. In 2019, he directed the new play, Eleanor And Alice, by Ellen Abrams, about Eleanor Roosevelt and her cousin, Alice Longworth, at the Roosevelt Museum/Library in Hyde Park, NY and Roosevelt House, NYC; and the premiere of Night Shadows, by Lynda Crawford, about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, at Irondale Center, Brooklyn, NY. In August 2016, he directed and acted in the solo play Canada Geese, by George Klas, at the NY International Fringe...
SCOTT KLAVAN - BIO
In 2019, Scott directed a 60 mins. pilot production of Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine’s classic musical Into The Woods, cast solely with senior actors; a co-production of Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and Music Theatre International (MTI). Stephen Sondheim visited a rehearsal and the project was covered in a feature in the NY Times. In 2019, he directed the new play, Eleanor And Alice, by Ellen Abrams, about Eleanor Roosevelt and her cousin, Alice Longworth, at the Roosevelt Museum/Library in Hyde Park, NY and Roosevelt House, NYC; and the premiere of Night Shadows, by Lynda Crawford, about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, at Irondale Center, Brooklyn, NY. In August 2016, he directed and acted in the solo play Canada Geese, by George Klas, at the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2015, Scott directed the Off-Broadway premiere of My Stubborn Tongue, a solo piece written & performed by Anna Fishbeyn, at New Ohio Theatre and United Solo Festival. Scott wrote and appeared in The Double Murder Plays, a series of one-acts for the 2007 Fringe. One of the plays, Double Murder, was published in Best American Short Plays of 2006-7, by Applause Books. In the 2010 Fringe, Scott wrote and performed in P.O., about modern postal workers. Both P.O. and Scott’s one-man piece, Wolf Messing & The KGB, were chosen as texts for Florida State University’s nationwide Speech & Debate competition, and his plays have been featured in The American College Theater Festival.
For over fifteen years, Scott was Script/Story Analyst for the legendary actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and later, for companies including HBO, CAA in LA, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Viacom, and Scott Rudin Prods. For ten years, he was Dramaturge for Theater By The Blind (TBTB), now Theater Breaking Through Barriers, running a playwrighting workshop for visually impaired writers. He wrote the theatrical adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, Cathedral, produced Off-Bway by TBTB. Scott participated as a Playwright in the 2007 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab.
Scott performed on Broadway in Irena’s Vow, with Tovah Feldshuh, reprising his role as Roman from the Off-Broadway run. In 2015, Scott acted in a featured role, with Judd Hirsch, in the Web Series, Small Miracles. For this part, he was nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor at the LA Web Fest. He played the title role and did narration for Mechanic to Millionaire: The Peter Cooper Story, a docu-drama for national PBS. In 2019, he played a major role in the independent feature Dickie K., and performed in the short film The Book Of Ruth, also with Tovah Feldshuh. Scott played five parts in the stage version of the film hit The Joy Luck Club, for Pan Asian Rep. Other Off-Broadway: Endpapers, dir. Pamela Berlin, prod. Benjamin Mordecai; Double Sophia, The Cherry Lane Theatre; the leading roleof Fisby in the classic comedy The Teahouse of the August Moon, as well as the NY premiere of Sayonara, also at Pan Asian Rep; Combustion at BAM; Treplev in The Seagull, directed by Kjetl Bang-Hansen, head of the National Theatre of Norway. Scott has performed regionally in A Shayna Maidel, Studio Arena Theatre, Buffalo, NY; The Common Pursuit, Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C; the title role in The Puppetmaster of Lodz, The Egg, Albany, NY; others. TV: The Onion News Network; Picket Fences, and As the World Turns, CBS; films on A & E, NBC and the SyFy Channel. Voice-Overs for PBS’ The American Experience, Wide Angle, others.
Scott is a Lifetime Member of The Actors Studio, and the Studio’s Playwrights/Directors Workshop (PDW). His own play The Common Area, was presented as part of PDW’s New Works Festival, 2019, He is a graduate of Kenyon College, where he performed in the world premiere of C.C. Pyle and the Bunion Derby, by Michael Cristofer, directed by Paul Newman. He is a two-time winner of Kenyon’s Paul Newman Acting Trophy.
Currently, Scott teaches Drama at the 92nd St. Y, JCC, JASA, and many other sites. He taught Creative Writing for Johns Hopkins Young Scholars, a nationwide program for exceptional students, and Drama for gifted teens at The Teak Fellowship. For ten years, Scott was a Group Leader in the field of Drama Therapy, for organizations including Creative Alternatives of New York (CANY), and Counseling in Schools (CIS), working with teens and adults with emotional disabilities, in alternative and charter schools, hospitals and shelters. In these programs, he wrote and directed dozens of original theater pieces. He currently writes about theater for the on-line arts journal, Escape Into Life. www.scottklavan.com