Phillip W. Beck
Director, Acting and Directing Program
Associate Professor of Acting and Directing
BA – California University, Long Beach
MFA – West Virginia University
Actors’ Equity Association
Professor Beck is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and studied directing at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. He has directed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the American Contemporary Theatre Festival, the Grove Shakespeare Festival, and The Greenbrier Valley Theatre. Beck has been member of Actors Equity since 1973. He has performed in more than 70 plays, including as a member of the Woodbridge acting company in Florida, and for the past 8 years as a member of the Greenbrier Valley Theatre Company, where he has performed such roles as: Iago in Othello; Jack in The Weir; Joe Keller in All My Sons; Morgan in The Drawer Boys; Sly in Sly Fox; Willy in All The King’s Men; and Hugo Taney in God’s Man in Texas. This last summer he performed the roles of Cladwell B. Caldwell, in Urinetown, David O. Selznick in Moonlight and Magnolias and Freddy in Picasso at the Lapine Agile. On the WVU stage, he has acted in several productions, including All My Sons, A Shayna Maidel, Father Uxbridge Wants to Marry, and The Tempest. Beck has served as a verse consultant for Libby Apple’s productions of Troilus and Cressida and Romeo and Juliet, Robert Leigh’s Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He co-founded the Southern California Conservatory Theater, as well as the Professional Actors Conservatory in Orange County, where he also served as both producer and conservatory director for eight years.
Professor Beck’s WVU directing credits include: Richard III; Broadway; The Taming of the Shrew; suBurbia; The Laramie Project; Boy Gets Girl; Good; A Flea in Her Ear; Look Homeward Angel; The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged; and the American premiere of Kolonists. In the spring of 08’ he will be directing Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn.
Professor Beck teaches Acting and Directing for the WVU Theatre Department and is the Director of the BFA, MFA acting program.
Kolonists
Flea In Her Ear