​KAREN HOWARD​ - Theatre & Opera Director, Educator

Karen Howard, MRes | Musical Theatre and Opera Director and Head of Musical Theatre at University of Chichester Conservatoire. 

Director for Scottish Opera, Theatre Royal Glasgow, Opera North, Grand Theatre, Leeds and Music Theatre Wales taking Peter Maxwell-Davis’ The Lighthouse on national tour. Overseas credits include Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Sao Carlos Theater, Lisbon for Scottish Opera, Britten’s Billy Budd, De Doelen, Rotterdam for Opera North and Donizetti‟s L’Elisir D’Amore for Opera Hogskolen, Oslo. World premieres of Kurt Schwertsik’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears for the Roald Dahl Foundation with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Rip Van Winkle, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, and Millennium community production, Wife of Kendal with 200 performers. She co-founded and directed Orange Opera rural touring company and directed an adaptation of Bach’s Coffee Cantata for Oud and Djembe with Moroccan musicians for a tour of independent coffee shops.

Karen trained at LAMDA, is a Master of Research, University of Brighton, external examiner for Guildford School of Acting and has been a visiting director at the Royal College of Music. At the University of Chichester Conservatoire she created their leading Musical Theatre Triple Threat course pioneering the London Graduate Showcase, regional tour, producers, stage management and commissioning programmes and MA Musical Theatre in partnership with a New York off-Broadway faculty. Many directing credits include Stiles and Drewe’s Honk!, Sondheim’s Into The Woods, Jonathan Larsen’s Rent, Wright and Forest's Grand Hotel and Bernstein's On the Town for the official centenary, among some thirty large and small scale productions presented in major regional theatres across southeast England.