Richard Finkelstein
I was born in 1952 in a suburb of Chicago, later moving to Delaware, and finally Baltimore, Maryland.
As a youth I was intensely curious about the world, embracing both the arts and sciences. I was terrible at school, so I was forced to educate myself, and to deploy imagination for both amusement and escape. I was inspired by a series of educational films produced by Bell Telephone on science topics directed by Frank Capra. These became, for me, a model of a fusion between the arts and sciences.
This mixture of science and art, was also inspired within the family. My mother had been a student of Charlotte Chorpenning (a pioneer of children’s theatre) at The Goodman School of Drama. Mom’s classmates included Jose Quintero and Shelly Berman. My father’s side of the family was the academic side with his Uncle, Nathan, being a developer of the automatic transmission and my dad’s cousin, Sir Moses Finley, becoming the first American to teach at Cambridge.
I attended Wilkes College in Pennsylvania, training under Klaus Holm, an Associate of Donald Oenslager. Klaus’ mother, Hanya Holm, a frequent visitor, was one of the four founders of Modern Dance. On Broadway she choreographed Kiss Me Kate, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. Hanya was the first person to copyright movement, inspired by her association with Rudolph Laban. This inspired me to seek Laban and dance training myself. I came to view stage design as an extension of the language of movement.
I then attended Carnegie-Mellon University, being the first student, I believe, to light a MainStage musical, Kiss Me Kate. This was the debut musical of CMU’s Musical Theatre Program.
My professional initiation came with Klaus Holm’s invitation to help open a most unique theatre complex, “The Egg” in Albany, NY. Donald Oenslager was slated to design Peter Pan, but passed away early in process. A decade later the show was to be revived, Klaus himself, suffered a stroke, so the mantle as designer passed on to me. My first intern, Jamie Leonard, now supervises various Foy operations on Broadway.
One never knows the impact one has on future generations but I had an inkling when I visited preparations for the national tour of The Lion King. During the course of my visit I discovered a five of my former students, from four different universities working on that production.
