Biography
Christopher Limber is an award-winning playwright, composer, director and actor whose career has spanned over 35 years acting, directing and providing scripts, music and lyrics for theatres around the country, including The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Childsplay Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, the Idaho Theatre for Youth, and many St. Louis based theatres including The Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, The Center for Contemporary Arts, The St. Louis Science Center, and Young Audiences Inc.
Mr. Limber has acted in over 80 productions and directed more than 75, including shows for The Repertory Theatre and Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Union Avenue Opera and the St. Louis Actor's Studio. Two of his directorial projects received awards: Bent for HotCity Theatre received a St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Judy Award" (2001) for Best Drama, and Twelfth Night for St. Louis Shakespeare was named "Best Shakespeare Production" in 2001 by The Riverfront Times.
For over a decade Mr. Limber served as Education Director for Shakespeare Festival St. Louis where he oversaw all touring productions, which reached more than 20,000 students each season. Two of his Playscripts, Inc. publications, Me & Richard 3 and Quick Brewed Macbeth, which he produced originally for the festival, won consecutive Kevin Kline Awards for Outstanding Production for Young Audiences in 2009 and 2010. His most recent Shakespeare inspired work is Cruel to be Kind?, an original script inspired by As You Like It, which uses Shakespeare's life in 1599 to illuminate the subject of bullying. This immensely popular production toured Missouri and Illinois for two seasons with an accompanying workshop, "Bullies and Boundaries," reaching over 60,000 students.
As a composer/Lyricist, Mr. Limber's published scores include Kabuki Ugly Duckling and The Secret Garden, both collaborations with playwright Pamela Sterling. The Secret Garden won the Most Distinguished Play Award from The American Association of Theatre in Education. Original cast recordings in New York City featured his orchestrations for Journey to the Center of the Earth by Stephen Dolginoff, on the recently released CD.
Mr. Limber holds a BFA in Acting from the State University of New York at Purchase. He studied English Literature and Shakespeare for a summer at Exeter College - University of Oxford, England and is a graduate of the Community Artists Training offered through the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis. Mr. Limber has been a national trainer around the world for Opera America, traveling internationally to present the curriculum Music! Words! Opera!, for teachers and opera companies. Mr. Limber is a proud member of Actor's Equity Association, the Dramatists' Guild and as a certified hypnotherapist, is a member of the National Guild of Hypnotherapists, specializing in individual performance coaching for all of the performing arts.
