Professor of Theatre, Retired

About

  • Role

    Emeritus
  • Position

    • Professor of Theatre, Retired
    • Founder of Kids Do It All (KDIA)
  • Concentration

    • Directing
  • Department

    • Theatre

Biography

Walt Jones, who joined CSU Theatre in 2006, is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. As a teacher of acting and directing, he has served on the faculty at Yale School of Drama, and University of California, San Diego.

He has directed twice on Broadway, six plays off-Broadway, including the American premiere of Howard Barker's No End of Blame at Manhattan Theatre Club, and over sixty plays in more than twenty regional theatres from Cambridge to Fairbanks and productions in Soviet Russia and in Tokyo. He directed world premiere productions of plays by Thomas Babe, Lanford Wilson, Naomi Iizuka, José Rivera, Arthur Kopit, Keith Huff, Jim Yoshimura, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Sam Shepard and David Mamet, John Pielmeier, Albert Innaurato, Derek Walcott and Christopher Durang. Among the many actors Walt has directed are Meryl Streep, Roc Dutton, John Turturro, Tony Shalhoub, Howard Rollins, Kate Burton, Nathan Lane, Liev Schreiber, Fran McDormand, Angie Bassett, Christopher Walken, Jason Alexander, Michael Gross, Lindsey Crouse, Linda Hunt, Sigourney Weaver, Peter MacNicol, Frances Conroy, Ricardo Antonio Chavira, Lewis Black, Mariel Hemingway, John Goodman, Zakes Mokae, Christopher Lloyd, Kevin Kline, Paul Guilfoyle, Bill Sadler, Athol Fugard, Max Wright, William H. Macy, Ed O'Neill, and Tony Award-winning stage actor, Jefferson Mays. Mr. Jones was a staff director at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference from 1980-1990, and directed regularly for the Yale Rep, Arena Stage, and the American Repertory Theatre. He is the author of The 1940s Radio Hour and A 1940s Radio Christmas Carol, both published by Samuel French, Inc.

Kids Do It All Musical Theatre Program

Walt Jones is the founder of the popular Kids Do It All Musical Theatre program, which he originally launched at UC San Diego and ran for five years. Professor Jones brought KDIA to Colorado State, where it launched in 2011 and has been "sold out" ever since. The program also ran for four years at CSU's Todos Santos campus in BCS, Mexico. For more about KDIA in California or Mexico, please contact Walt Jones.