Chris O'Neill is a Boston-based theater and media artist/storyteller/writer and a professional freelance Videographer/Editor, Filmmaker, Theater Director, Theater & Film Instructor and Graphic/Website/Whatever-you-need Designer. He is the resident Drama Instructor and Theater Director for PALS Children's Chorus in Brookline, MA and a Family Support Caseworker for the Dianne Devanna Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect in the Boston-South Shore area.
Originally from Cranston, Rhode Island, Chris has done a whole lot of schooling. This includes a BA in the Humanities from Providence College (concentration in Ancient History), an MA in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and an MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College, as well as coursework in film, video and web design at University of Rhode Island and Community College of Rhode Island and extensive on-the-job training in counseling, therapy and behavior management. He has lived and worked in Providence, Boston, and New York, and now makes his home in the Boston area.
Despite an early childhood attraction to movies and movie-making, Chris was between possible careers in Archaeology and Journalism, neither of which he has really done any of. After college, he gave two years of his life over to the AmeriCorps national service program, and it's a good thing he did, because this is where (after somehow, almost accidentally directing a middle school production of THE WIZARD OF OZ) he finally came to terms with the fact that he was in fact a director and not Indiana Jones (although he's still keeping that door open). In the intervening years, he has worked as a Youth Tracker, an Intensive Outreach Counselor, an In-School Tutor, an Awake Overnight Residential Counselor, a Welfare-to-Work Employment Skills Teacher & Job Coach, a stock boy at Benny's, a Summer Camp Director, a Pizza Dough Maker, a Sales Associate for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a Hotel Front Desk Overnight Clerk, a Payroll Assistant for Emerson Ecollege, a Managing Producer for Playwrights Horizons Theater School @ NYU-Tisch, and, once, an extra on Law and Order: SVU. He has Mentored young Directors professionally at both Tisch and for local theater companies, and has taught acting, improv, producing, dramaturgy, stage management and nearly every other theatrical discipline to nearly every age group at one time or another.
He has directed dozens of stage plays throughout the Northeast since beginning his career in 1999 and is a founding member of both Rhode Island Stage Ensemble (RISE) and Encore Repertory Company. He has also worked as a Producing Director for the Off-Broadway Prospect Theater Company in New York and is currently assuming the role of Artistic Director of Turnstyle Theater, Boston. He has a special connection with the Stadium Theater in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a former vaudeville house which his productions have been helping to renovate and support for nearly as long as he has been directing, and which is the sole location of his film THEY WALK AMONG US.
Shall I rattle off some credits? THEY WALK AMONG US (World Premiere, 2004), A CHRISTMAS CAROL (his own adaptation, 2003), JOSEPH...DREAMCOAT(2005), BYE BYE BIRDIE (2000), BROADWAY THEN AND NOW III (1999), and assorted other musicals and revues for Encore Rep; an Appalachian-folklore-inspired production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM for Black Box Theater; the Off-Off-Broadway Premiere of THE PEOPLE COULD FLY for Prospect Theater (starring Barnum & Bailey Ringleader Jonathan Iverson); WHY THE LORD COME TO SAND MOUNTAIN and THE MYSTERY PLAYS for Brooklyn College; LEND ME A TENOR for Theater Company of Saugus; JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at Emerson College; and most recently ANNIEand LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS for Rhode Island Stage Ensemble. Chris also Assistant Directed the World Premiere of HONOR at Prospect Theater and the New York premiere of Nick's play THEY WALK AMONG US. As an educator/director of children's theater, he most recently directed SEUSSICAL JR and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS with PALS Children's Chorus, and MULAN, JR with a cast of over sixty fifth-graders for the Hemenway School in Framingham, MA.
In 2004, Chris was awarded Emerson College's prestigious Dean's Award for the Performing Arts for his Master's Thesis, THE SONG OF NICK, a meditation on directing A NIGHT OF ANGELS, the memorial event which included the world premiere of THEY WALK AMONG US. He has also received the Joel Zwick Award for Directing while a student at Brooklyn College, and has been twice the recipient of Individual Artist grants from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts for his work on the documentary 41, which has itself been the recipient of multiple Film Festival Awards throughout North America. He has served as both Vice President and President of the Brooklyn College Graduate Organization of Directors of Theater (GODOT) and has worked on theater productions in nearly every capacity: Producer, Director, Actor, Set Designer, Lighting Designer, Sound Designer, Video Designer, Marketing Coordinator, Graphic Designer, Stage Manager and Dramaturg.
As early as 2001, Chris was also writing for the stage, with a libretto for a production of the liturgical musical THE SONG OF MARK. In 2004, he premiered his modern-day adaptation of MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET at the Stadium Theater in Rhode Island, which was also his first major experiment in video-live action hybridization. This technique has since become a hallmark of his work, most recently seen in JOSEPH...DREAMCOAT for RISE, in which a total of nine hours of original video scenery was integrated into the production, running simultaneously on three separate video monitors. He has also written short-form theater including the ten-minute play THE HERBALIFE DIARIES: A NUTRITIONAL FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES for the Prospect Theater/ Dark Nights play festival SUBJECT: OBJECT.
That's the other thing: he also makes films. The passing of his younger brother, the brilliant performer/musician/writer Nick O'Neill, led him to direct his first of these, a feature-length adaptation of Nick's play THEY WALK AMONG US, the first film to be made under Chris' label, Nicky's Counting Productions. The making of TWAU led to the documentary 41, a collaboration with Rhode Island filmmaker Christian de Rezendes that documents Nick's life and all that came after. In 2009, he wrote, directed and edited a somewhat damaged "rough draft" of his original short film, WORLD WIDE WEB, which he hopes to remake soon (see part of the damaged original here). He has also written an original feature screenplay, ALL SOULS, and is currently in the process of figuring out how to pay for it, i.e., pre-pre-pre-Production.
Chris has been married since 2004 to his rad wife, Leah Labrecque, who currently attends grad school at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, or, as it is actually known, the Simmons College of Children's Literature and Library Sciences. They have one son, Asher Nicholas, who is also rad. Chris enjoys traveling and wishes he could afford to do it more. He is also a self-professed geek who consults Aint It Cool News multiple times per day.
Anyone interested in contracting Chris as a writer, filmmaker or director of adult theater is encouraged to read his Personal Aesthetic Statement.
