James Darrah

American director, production designer, and visual artist James Darrah is committed to new collaborative projects within the mediums of opera, theater, musical theater, and film. He recently made his Chicago Opera Theater directorial and design debut with an acclaimed production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée (Medea). Direction + design includes projects with OperaUCLA, the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, National Children's Chorus, and SCA Gallery in LA, as well as assistant/associate work with The Getty Villa Museum in Malibu, Central City Opera, Opera Cleveland, and The Metropolitan Opera at The Juilliard School.

He was an apprentice in directing/design with the Croatian National Theatre and the Split Summer Festival and trained as an assistant and associate with directors Stephen Wadsworth and Peter Kazaras. Upcoming work includes projects with Chicago Opera Theater, OperaUCLA, Cornish Opera Theater in Seattle, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a return to the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival and the launch of the Camden Stage Festival in Maine, of which he is artistic director. MFA: UCLA Theater, Film, and Television. He is in pre-production for his first feature film Wingstroke, and is the recipient of the James Pendleton Foundation grant, the George Burns/Gracie Allen scholarship (UCLA) and the Princess Grace Award in Theater.