Gus Kaikkonen

Gus Kaikkonen (Artistic Director) – Gus Kaikkonen’s plays have been produced Off Broadway at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, the Production Company, in London at the New End Theatre and the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden in London; and at regional theatres across the US. Awards include grants from the New York State and Michigan Arts councils, the Lecomte du Nouys Playwriting Award, and Thurber and MacDowell Fellowships. The American Theatre Critics Association selected his play, Time Steps produced at the BoarsHead Theatre, as one of the ten best plays to open outside of New York. His musical Cindy Reilly won Michigan’s Thespie Award for Best New Play. His musical People Like Us, written with Todd Almond, won the 2002 New Hampshire Theatre Award for best new play. He has worked as a visiting artist at Juilliard (2004-present), NYU, Hofstra, Ohio State, Hendrix College, Connecticut College, and Louisiana College. He made his Broadway acting debut in the original cast of Equus. Other New York credits include Tommy Tune’s American premiere production of Cloud 9, and The Country Girl with Hal Holbrook. On television he co-starred in the PBS production of Willa Cather’s Paul’s Case with Eric Roberts, has appeared on Law & Order SVU and Criminal Intent, and has had continuing roles on ABC’s All My Children and One Life to Live. He has performed at the Long Wharf, Folger, Goodman, Asolo, GeVa, Arden, American Heartland, Aspen, and BoarsHead Theatres, and the Coconut Grove Playhouse, where he was nominated for a Carbonell Award by the Southeastern Theatre Critics Association. He received Vermont’s 2000 Bessie Award for Best Actor for Richard III at the Lost Nation Theatre. Mr. Kaikkonen’s directing credits include Off Broadway productions of Antigone (Wall Street Journal Best of 2006) for the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Arms and the Man, The Gentleman Dancing Master, I Have Been Here Before, and Heartbreak House at the Pearl, Macbeth with Stephen McHattie, Candida with Laurie Kennedy at Playhouse 91, Richard III with Austin Pendleton at Riverside Shakespeare, the New York premieres of Harley Granville-Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance with George Morfogen and The Charity That Began At Home with Kristin Griffith, and The Madras House, all at the Mint, Andrew John’s Fridays with Henderson Forsythe, Trish Johnson’s Second Prize: Two Months in Leningrad with J. Smith-Cameron, and Susan Sandler’s Under the Bed. In the regions, he has directed at Ford’s Theatre (Trying with James Whitmore), the Asolo, the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Philadephia Shakespeare Festival, BoarsHead Theatre, Cohoes Music Hall, the Springer Opera House, and the Coconut Grove Playhouse (About Time with Theodore Bikel). For a season he was the resident assistant director for the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center. From 1990-03 he was the Artistic Director of Riverside Shakespeare Company in NYC, during which time he produced three seasons of works by Shakespeare and Shaw, as well as the world premiere of Iron Bars, by Arpad Goncz, the President of Hungary. Sine 1996 he has been the Artistic Director of the Peterborough Players, where he has staged more than 40 plays, including Mary Beth Hurt in Six Degrees of Separation, James Rebhorn in Later Life, and James Whitmore in Our Town, You Can’t Take it With You, About Time, Inherit the Wind, Tuesdays With Morrie, and The Man Who Came To Dinner. His Peterborough productions of The Cherry Orchard, You Can’t Take It With You, About Time, and Inherit the Wind won the 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 New Hampshire Theatre Awards for Best Professional Production and Best Direction.

Past Productions & Positions

Artistic Director, 1996 - present
Bad Dates, 2009
The Breath of Life, 2009
Heartbreak House, 2009
Copenhagen, 2009
Anne of Green Gables, 2009
I Remember Mama, 2009
Stones in His Pockets, 2008
Private Lives, 2008
An Ideal Husband, 2008
Our Town, 2008
Cindy Reilly, 2008
Harvey, 2008
The Last 5 Years, 2007
The Main Who Came to Dinner, 2007
The Underpants, 2007
A Doll House, 2007
The Long Christmas Dinner, 2007
Picnic, 2007
Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, 2006
Hobson's Choice, 2006
The Winter's Tale, 2006
Fallen Angels, 2006
The Turn of the Screw, 2006
Lettice and Lovage, 2005
Inherit the Wind, 2005
Solidarity, 2005
A Number, 2005
Little Women, 2005
Fully Committed, 2004
About Time, 2004
Laughing Stock, 2004
The Return of the Prodigal, 2004
The Glass Menagerie, 2004
Going to St. Ives, 2003
Proof, 2003
Candida, 2003
You Can't Take It With You, 2003
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, 2003
Syncopation, 2003
Full Gallop, 2002
Dinner With Friends,2002
The Cherry Orchard, 2002
Mr. Pim Passes By, 2002
People Like Us, 2002
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, 2002
Love's Labours Lost, 2002
Fully Committed, 2001
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 2001
As You Like It, 2001
Art, 2001
Collected Stories, 2001
La Dispute, 2001
Sleuth, 2000
The Philanderer, 2000
Our Town, 2000
A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, 2000
Pirates in the Gazebo!, 2000
The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,1999
Six Degrees of Separation, 1999
The Importance of Being Ernest, 1999
Wait Until Dark, 1999
Cindy Reilly, 1999
Shirley Valentine, 1998
Later Life, 1998
Ten Little Indians, 1998
You Never Can Tell, 1998
Many Moons, 1998
Romeo and Juliet, 1997
Broadway Bound, 1997
Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1997
Sylvia, 1997
A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1997
Marry Me a Little, 1996
Greetings!, 1996
The Matchmaker, 1996
Oleanna, 1996