Christopher Carter Sanderson

Christopher Carter Sanderson

Christopher Carter Sanderson (founding artistic and producing director, Gorilla Rep NYC) is the recipient of a Fulbright grant to write a musical ("Woyzeck Musical Deathmetal," produced Kentucky Rep, Times Square International Theater Festival NYC), author of the verse play adaptation "UBU IS KING!" (Accolades Arts Press, produced worldwide), the musical KNB (Off-Broadway, FringeNYC), the...
Christopher Carter Sanderson (founding artistic and producing director, Gorilla Rep NYC) is the recipient of a Fulbright grant to write a musical ("Woyzeck Musical Deathmetal," produced Kentucky Rep, Times Square International Theater Festival NYC), author of the verse play adaptation "UBU IS KING!" (Accolades Arts Press, produced worldwide), the musical KNB (Off-Broadway, FringeNYC), the prose-poem novel "The Too-Brief Chronicle of Judah Lowe" (SMP), and the scholarly work "Gorilla Theatre" (Routledge). Criticism appears on HuffPo and Theatre Library Association (http://www.tla-online.org/book-review-a-life-coaching-approach-to-screen-acting/). Member, Dramatists Guild. BFA NYU, MFA Yale. Teaching assignments, guest lectures, guest artist positions, and demos on request.

Plays

  • dirt
    In the farmhouse of what's left of a large farm in Northern Virginia USA, a family has just lost their mother, who succumbed to dementia and old age. She was white. Her natural son from another marriage long ago who is also white is 30 and has been the caretaker for her and her husband, who is Black, for years. Their other son, also his from a previous marriage long ago, is Black. The time is now, or...
    In the farmhouse of what's left of a large farm in Northern Virginia USA, a family has just lost their mother, who succumbed to dementia and old age. She was white. Her natural son from another marriage long ago who is also white is 30 and has been the caretaker for her and her husband, who is Black, for years. Their other son, also his from a previous marriage long ago, is Black. The time is now, or thereabouts. The forces pulling on the unraveling family defy stereotype and cliche as they alternately battle and plead with each other to shape the future of the family - or are they repeating an entire country's doomed past? By turns funny, tragic, poetic, unhinged, disarming, and armed - not entirely unlike the South of today - dirt leaves the audience with many questions, and plenty to consider about brotherhood... maybe even in a new way.
  • blood
    Over gin and tonics at his sister’s party in NYC's East Village, the ghost of a young white man’s father returns to demand revenge for a horror committed long ago in the family’s ancestral seat in small-town Virginia. With the help of his sister, who is a statistician, her friend, who is a psychopharmacological (so good, she’s slightly magical) chemist, and her other friend who is a budding true-crime...
    Over gin and tonics at his sister’s party in NYC's East Village, the ghost of a young white man’s father returns to demand revenge for a horror committed long ago in the family’s ancestral seat in small-town Virginia. With the help of his sister, who is a statistician, her friend, who is a psychopharmacological (so good, she’s slightly magical) chemist, and her other friend who is a budding true-crime novelist, the young man sets out and seeks his family’s horrific truth… with the help of a little magic. Or is it drugs? Maybe both.
  • UBU IS KING!
    Since its premier just before the turn of the last century, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi has been causing controversy. Students and fans of the theater know of its importance, and the importance of producing it again and
    again. And yet, the original five-act script can be cumbersome and the irreverent tone of the original French difficult to capture. Here, noted director Christopher Carter Sanderson, founding...
    Since its premier just before the turn of the last century, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi has been causing controversy. Students and fans of the theater know of its importance, and the importance of producing it again and
    again. And yet, the original five-act script can be cumbersome and the irreverent tone of the original French difficult to capture. Here, noted director Christopher Carter Sanderson, founding artistic director of
    Gorilla Rep NYC brings us a manageable one-act version with all of the sting and punch of the original intact, translated and adapted for contemporary audiences. Over a decade of celebrated productions have
    tested the veracity of UBU IS KING! which has proved to be as controversial and vital as Alfred Jarry’s.

    “… Sanderson's approach to Ubu is, I think, the best possible one… grandly satisfying … And if some of the
    play's satirical jabs still manage to draw a little blood, well, so much the better…” - Martin Denton, nytheatre.com

    “…Artistic Director Christopher Carter Sanderson has spent a decade building a reputation as one of the finest
    directors of outdoor and environmental Shakespeare since Joseph Papp…” - Leonard Jacobs, theatermania.com
  • In The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers
    A union member stops by the office to ask for the ability to apply for union jobs that would elevate him out of homelessness. He's perfectly willing to agree to pay his dues out of any such jobs he gets. With a nod to a famous play, it doesn't go well.
  • Woyzeck Musical Deathmetal
    Forced into madness by poverty, starvation, and an unscrupulous field doctor's experiments, a soldier in one of the previous Century's wholesale slaughters (wars) is driven to kill everything that he loves in the world, about himself, and in his unconsolable grief and confusion exacts the ultimate punishment on himself. And, deathmetal.
  • The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand Adapted For The Theatre
    “You’ve taken Rand’s novel, and the Warner Bros film, and made it into a piece of theatre with a quick pace, strong forward momentum—and one that carries to the fore Rand’s impassioned ideas about the individual, originality, and integrity (in life and in art). There’s great clarity to your work here. Undoubtedly, the question of the individual versus the collective is always in the air.” —James Bundy, Artistic...
    “You’ve taken Rand’s novel, and the Warner Bros film, and made it into a piece of theatre with a quick pace, strong forward momentum—and one that carries to the fore Rand’s impassioned ideas about the individual, originality, and integrity (in life and in art). There’s great clarity to your work here. Undoubtedly, the question of the individual versus the collective is always in the air.” —James Bundy, Artistic Director, Yale Rep, Dean, Yale School of Drama
    In a taught, 90-minute tale, Ayn Rand's iconic story of Howard Roark, a young architect who makes his way through the moribund world of the ordinary and accepted on his own rigorous terms, unfolds in the best possible way to show that story for the allegory it was meant to be. Rand's background as a Broadway playwright comes to the fore as the bones of the story carry it well. Ideally suited for a Black actor and actress to play the lead roles and make the controversial yet powerful statement that the individual is where society's value is expressed.
  • I Hope They Serve Beer On Broadway by Tucker Max Adapted for the Theatre
    No rape, no abuse, just lots of adults behaving badly - especially amusing when cast with an LGBTQ, trans, and otherwise amused cast of diverse, interesting artists. "I'm Tucker Max, and I'm an asshole," begins a romping series of self-narrated scenes of madness and heteronormative self-loathing. Get ironic. "High Art Parody" - jezebel (https://jezebel.com/that-tucker-max-play-is-...
    No rape, no abuse, just lots of adults behaving badly - especially amusing when cast with an LGBTQ, trans, and otherwise amused cast of diverse, interesting artists. "I'm Tucker Max, and I'm an asshole," begins a romping series of self-narrated scenes of madness and heteronormative self-loathing. Get ironic. "High Art Parody" - jezebel (https://jezebel.com/that-tucker-max-play-is-actually-an-awesome-high-art-pa-487243153)