Bio


WALT WITCOVER has had a fifty-year career in the theatre as actor, director, and teacher. After Cornell University (BA and MA), and serving in Europe in the Field Artillery during World War II, he trained professionally at the American Theatre Wing in New York. He studied acting with Curt Conway, Herbert Berghof and Lee Strasberg. Under the leadership of his mentor, Mr. Strasberg, he fine-tooled his directing in the Actors Studio Directors Unit, where his "mod" production of Verdi's La Traviata won the Actors Studio "Total Theatre" Award.

Mr. Witcover directed on the summer circuit for a dozen seasons; his New York Off-Broadway productions have won three "OBIE" Awards; and, as co-founder and Artistic Director of Masterworks Laboratory Theatre, he has staged over thirty innovative productions of classic plays and operas, as well as poetry, song- and story-theatre projects.

He taught acting technique, scene study, musical theatre, directing and a classics workshop at the HB Studio for twenty-five years;   he was guest instructor at the Stella Adler Studio; and Acting Mentor and Associate Professor of Theatre in the BFA professional training program of SUNY, Purchase, and at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.   Guest directing stints have included fresh staging of classics at Syracuse University, Virginia Tech, and U. of Md., College Park.   He now teaches exclusively at the Witcover Acting Studio in mid-Manhattan.

Actors he has taught or directed include F. Murray Abraham, Jane Alexander, Barbara Barrie, Ernest Borgnine, Ruth Chatterton, Domanic Chianese, Robert Clohessy, James Coburn, Alex Cord, Sandy Dennis, Farley Granger, Tim Jerome Terry Kiser, Liz Larsen, John Leguizamo, Anne Meara, Tony Musante, George Peppard, Luis Antonio Ramos, Charles Nelson Reilly, George Segal, Sylvia Sidney and Jerry Stiller.