Skjaret, Lucas

Biography

Lucas Skjaret (he/him) is a stage director, arts producer, and theatre educator whose work has been seen in the US, Canada, and Europe. Before Concord, he was a theatre-maker in the Minneapolis/St. Paul community. In the Twin Cities, he also founded and was the artistic director of Market Garden Theatre, which produced primarily new American work and helped develop “locally sourced” playwrights through the Fresh Roots Festival. Lucas was also the artistic administrator for The Public Theatre of Minnesota, a Literary Associate for SteppingStone Theatre for Youth Development, and an Artistic Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, one of the nation’s leading new works development organizations. Recent directing credits include Sarah Ruhl’s Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, My Barking Dog by Eric Coble, Another Revolution by Jacqueline Bircher, On the Exhale by Martín Zimmerman, and Public Exposure by Keith Hovis. As a director, Lucas has a passion for new plays, reapproaching canonical texts, Postmodern storytelling practices, and consent-based theatre-making approaches.

Lucas received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Theatre Directing from Baylor University in Waco, Texas and his double bachelor’s (BA) in Theatre Arts and Scandinavian Studies from the University of North Dakota, through which he spent time abroad studying at the University of Oslo’s Ibsen Centre as well as The International Summer School of Oslo. He also received graduate certification in higher education pedagogy and online teaching from Baylor University. Lucas has trained extensively in Theatrical Intimacy Education and is an alumnus of Directors Lab North in Toronto, Canada, and the Kennedy American Theatre Directing Intensive. He has studied at the Stella Alder Studio for Acting in New York City and devised theatre-making with Ghost River Theatre in Calgary, Canada. Lucas is an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

You can learn more about Lucas on his website, www.lucasskjaret.com

Education

MFA Baylor University – Theatre Directing (2024)
BA The University of North Dakota – Theatre Arts & Scandinavian Studies (2013)

Research

Lucas’ research is lives in both creative and academic spaces. His creative scholarship focuses on developing new work with playwrights, global theatre practices, musical theatre and opera, community-driven and rural storytelling, exploring the intersection between technology and live performance, and Theatre for Young Audiences. Lucas is currently experimenting with how devised theatre practices can apply to prewritten scripts. His academic scholarship focuses on stage directing theory and pedagogy, adaptation and translation studies, Queer theatre, and Nordic dramatic literature. Lucas has been published in the Texas Theatre Journal, The Communication and Theatre Association Journal of Minnesota, and the Journal of American Theatre and Drama. He has presented his scholarship at The Comparative Drama Conference, The Association of Theatre in Higher Education, The Southeastern Theatre Conference, and the Comparative Drama Conference. Lucas has also presented at the MidAmerica Theatre Conference where he is on the leadership committee for the Playwrighting Symposium. Lucas seeks to train his future collaborators to be holistic scholar-artists who approach their craft with grounded nuance and lifelong curiosity.