Tom Herman’s direction has been featured both Off and Off-Off Broadway, and he was recently named “Best Director of a Play or Musical” at the 2017 Midtown International Theater Festival for his work on a new musical, The Bet (book by Tony Sportiello, music & lyrics by David Wolfson).

 

Off Broadway credits:  Al Tapper’s musical revue An Evening at the Carlyle, which played for over seven months at the Algonquin Theatre and was proclaimed “the surprise Off-Broadway hit of the summer theatre season” by United Press International and named an “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Daily News); and, Walter Stepp’s Mark Twain’s Blues: A Play With Songs (Daryl Roth 2 Theatre).

 

A select few Off-Off Broadway credits:  A revival of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child for The Michael Chekhov Theatre (a production acclaimed by The New York Times as “exciting… powerful… a tragic opera”); the critically applauded and sold-out runs of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero and Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine at Brooklyn’s Gallery Players; and, a reading of Tony Sportiello’s backstage comedy Star Power for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (HBO).

 

Other notable projects include directing staged readings of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra featuring Tony Award-winner Richard Easton, and a number of developmental readings of the new musical comedy National Pastime (book by Tony Sportiello and music & lyrics by Al Tapper) at several venues, including a performance of the piece at the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY featuring two-time Daytime Emmy nominee Robert Newman.

 

Many of the plays Tom has directed have been world or NYC premieres and have gone on to be published, such as Edward Musto’s The Ninth Circle, Yasmine Rana’s Decent, William Gadea’s Touch and Michael Folie’s Lemonade.  While devoted to discovering new playwrights and developing new work, Tom has also directed contemporary plays and classics, including Schiller’s Mary Stuart and the relatively unknown Think Twice, a thriller by controversial novelist Ayn Rand that had never before been produced in New York City.

 

NYC companies for which Tom has staged productions or readings include Ensemble Studio Theatre, The York Theatre Company, Urban Stages, Vital Theatre, The WorkShop Theater, Pulse Ensemble, Oberon Theatre Ensemble, Rude Mechanicals, The Drilling Company, the DR2, Algonquin Theatre Productions, 29th Street Rep, The Mint Space, Theatre 603, 45th Street Theatre, Inner Space, Michael Chekhov Theatre Company, End Times Productions, The Samuel French Festival, The Players Club, Chelsea Theatre Center, Gallery Players and West Side Theatre Center.  He’s also directed regionally at Virginia’s Wayside Theatre, where he was Associate Artistic Director for two seasons.

 

In addition to his directing, Tom has served as Literary Manager or script reader for several companies in New York, including 13 years for The Public Theater.  He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.