STEVEN CARL McCASLAND is the founder and Artistic Director of The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective, for which he has directed Lift, Rags, Moose Murders, Yentl, A Doll's Life, Alice Au Pays Des Merveilles, Twelfth Night, Crossing Brooklyn and more. McCasland's revivals of Rags and A Doll's Life featured heavily revised librettos, painstakingly put together using many lost drafts. The end results were comprehensive looks at long-troubled musicals in rare New York revivals. He also directed the world premiere of his plays neat & tidy, BLACK [Billy Learns About Captain Kirk] and BLUE: a fable. Beautiful Soup was founded in the summer of 2010. Steven received his Bachelor in Arts for Directing from Pace University.
In 2009, Steven was commissioned to adapt poet Jack Wiler's anthologies into...
STEVEN CARL McCASLAND is the founder and Artistic Director of The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective, for which he has directed Lift, Rags, Moose Murders, Yentl, A Doll's Life, Alice Au Pays Des Merveilles, Twelfth Night, Crossing Brooklyn and more. McCasland's revivals of Rags and A Doll's Life featured heavily revised librettos, painstakingly put together using many lost drafts. The end results were comprehensive looks at long-troubled musicals in rare New York revivals. He also directed the world premiere of his plays neat & tidy, BLACK [Billy Learns About Captain Kirk] and BLUE: a fable. Beautiful Soup was founded in the summer of 2010. Steven received his Bachelor in Arts for Directing from Pace University.
In 2009, Steven was commissioned to adapt poet Jack Wiler's anthologies into a solo performance about Wiler's struggle with HIV. That play, Fun Being Me, was workshopped with Jack in the title role before his passing in 2009. His other plays, When I'm 64, Hope & Glory, The Tip, Opheliacs Anonymous, Fifth Position, Blue, Pulchritudinous (Huntington Award in Playwriting - First Place), neat & tidy and Billy Learns About Captain Kirk have all received productions regionally and in Manhattan.
In June of 2011, Steven premiered his original adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Setting Wonderland in the heart of Paris, he also directed and was featured in the cast as the Mock Turtle. After its one week workshop, Alice Au Pays Des Merveilles was picked up for an extended run at The SoHo Playhouse through September. His play neat & tidy made a splash on the Bowery in May of 2012, with critics hailing McCasland as a new Thornton Wilder and the play as one of the Top Dramatic Plays of the year.
After critically acclaimed workshops of Steven's plays Little Wars and What Was Lost in 2014, Beautiful Soup partnered with The Clarion Theatre to present five of his plays in repertory. Those five plays began on May 7th, 2015 and ran through the end of the month. Also featured in rep were 28 Marchant Avenue, Der Kanarienvogel (The Canary) and a revival of neat & tidy. His writing has been acclaimed by New York critics as "brilliant", "riveting", "mesmerizing" and "extraordinary".
Steven's plays Little Wars, Shades Of Blue: The Decline and Fall of Lady Day, What Was Lost, 28 Marchant Avenue: Six Summers At Hyannis Port are available for purchase at Amazon.com and the Drama Book Shop.
While not at the theater, Steven maintains life as a private vocal and acting coaching, prepping New York actors on new material and for upcoming auditions. In addition, he runs a blog of free, public domain monologues, all written by him. "The Bone Orchard Monologues", all inspired by the lives of famous figures from history, can be found by visiting http://boneorchardmonologues.wordpress.com. Steven is also the Events and Social Media Manager for New York's Drama Book Shop, where he interviews playwrights and authors in the shop's Arthur Seelen Theatre throughout the year.
Most recently, his play MEMORARE, chronicling the lives of eight Catholic nuns during the Harlem Race Riots of 1964 made its world premiere in New York City at St. John's Lutheran Church on Christopher Street.