"...This is a powerful, powerful experience, and so well acted, so well written, so well directed..."—WFMT Fine Arts Radio (Chicago)
CHARLES NELSON REILLY
Charles Nelson Reilly (director of the first production of MUSE of FIRE) was a Tony Award-winning actor and Broadway stage director, and an acclaimed opera director and acting teacher. Far more than the zany television personality by which he was most often identified, Reilly nurtured the creation of a whole series of unique one-person stage plays. Most famously, he directed Julie Harris in her Tony Award—winning star turn in The Belle of Amherst, based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Among his many Broadway directing credits were Ira Levin’s Break a Leg, Larry Shue’s The Nerd, and the revival of The Gin Game, starring Miss Harris and Charles Durning, for which Mr. Reilly was the sole American director to be nominated for a Tony in 1997. Mr. Reilly’s career as an opera director included productions for Chicago Opera Theater, Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Toledo Opera, Milwaukee Opera and Opera Pacific.
David Katz and Charles Nelson Reilly were friends for three decades, first meeting through their mutual Hartford voice teacher, Mrs. Friedrich Schorr. Charles Nelson Reilly died in May 2007. MUSE of FIRE was his last play.