ABOUT US

David Catanzarite is a veteran stage director, activist, and theatre educator. He has directed more than 150 productions in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago, Baltimore and the Coachella Valley. As a Visiting Artist at the New Africa Theatre Project in Cape Town, he met Nelson Mandela during the country’s first free elections. He twice toured, taught and performed in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1984 and 1989 under the auspices of the International Theatre Institute. In 1989 one of his guest performances with the dissident Ha Divadlo Company was suppressed by Czech police, just a few weeks before the start of the Velvet Revolution. In Los Angeles, Catanzarite’s productions garnered numerous awards including a NAACP Image Award and numerous “picks of the week” in the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly. He was a resident director and board member for the Watts Village Theatre Company, honored by the American Theatre Wing (the Tony organization) as one of the top ten emerging professional companies in the United States. While earning his MFA in Directing at the University of Southern California, David spent two seasons as an intern at Center Theatre Group’s New Play Development Festival, training with Oskar Eustis, Jose Luis Valenzuela, Culture Clash, and playwright Oliver Mayer. After moving to the Coachella Valley in 2008, Catanzarite’s hit production of Tuesdays With Morrie, starring Hal Linden, launched the first Actors’ Equity season at the Indian Wells Theatre. Then in 2010 David and his wife Karen Lin founded Green Room Theatre Company at the CSU San Bernardino Palm Desert Campus. For thirteen years their conservatory program has offered training for children and teens, regardless of ability to pay. It grew each summer to mount ever larger, professionally mounted summer musicals that showcased the talents of up top 60 teens and children. With the support of private donors and foundations Green Room has awarded more than $96,000 in scholarships and paid internships since 2010. It has touched the lives of hundreds of young artists, many of whom got their first paying theatre jobs growing up within the company. Green Room alumni now work professionally on Broadway and in Los Angeles theatre and film. Other alumni are involved in almost every theatre company in the Coachella Valley, and have won Open Call, the Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival, Desert Theatre League’s Annual Scholarship, and the ESU Shakespeare Festival. David brought 36 years experience as a college professor and public school arts educator to the Green Room Conservatory, including two years as Associate Professor at College of the Desert and seven years at CSU San Bernardino’s Palm Desert Campus. He has taught stage directing full time at Pomona College, Towson University, and the University of San Francisco, and served as a popular instructor at UCLA, Stanford University, and Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. In 2001 he was tapped to serve on the committee that wrote California’s first Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards; the California Department of Education has also employed him in theatre curriculum development and on advisory committees for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Now, David and Karen, are taking on a thrilling new challenge with Green Room Theatre: to build a professional theatre for neighborhoods in East Coachella Valley. In February 2023 the City of Coachella bolstered their initiative by giving the company an office at City Hall. With support from the California Arts Council, Green Room has already launched a burgeoning ballet folklorico program at elementary schools in Indio and a theatre and literacy program at libraries, middle schools and high schools in Mecca, Indio, and La Quinta.