About Me
James Vesce is a director, musical director, composer, and sound designer.
He is currently a member of the Chelsea Childers Project, a musical collaboration based in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more about the group check out jamesvesce.com/ChelseaChildersProject.htm or visit myspace.com/chelsroxguitar for more on group member Chelsea Childers and her solo work.
James has directed community-based, university, and professional theater, including works in New York at the International Fringe Festival, the Kraine Theater, and the Actor's Playhouse and in Boston at the Strand Theatre, the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Lyric Stage, the World Trade Center, and the Shubert Theater. He has also directed for New WORLD Theater in Amherst, Massachusetts and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His musical work has been performed by Notario Dance Company in New York venues including The International Dance Festival at The Duke on 42nd Street, Joyce Soho, and The Kitchen and at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts. He has also composed music featured at First Night Boston, New WORLD Theater, and the National Black Theatre Festival.
James was co-founder and Artistic Director of the Dimock Street Voices, a multicultural inner-city performing arts company in Boston. Over a period of eight years the Voices created and performed over twenty-eight new or restaged classic works and musicals from the multicultural canon. Much of that work was devoted to voicing many of the social and cultural concerns in Boston’s neighborhoods, particularly youth and gang violence, substance abuse, and the concerns of youth-at-risk. The Voices also built collaborative associations with many local institutions, including the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the City of Boston, the Strand Theatre, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, the Massachusetts College of Art, and Roxbury Community College. James also served for two years as the Artistic Director of the Lyric Stage’s Neighborhood Theatre.
In 2001 James created Twilight Repertory Company, a multicultural performing arts company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, committed to the presentation of underrepresented theatrical and dance forms, new work from playwrights of color, and deconstructed plays from the multicultural repertory. Its inaugural production, Simple Thoughts, based on the Langston Hughes character Jesse B. Semple, debuted at the Connelly Theatre in New York as part of the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival.
Twilight Rep is developing three other new works: empty, a dance/theater piece based on the myth of Echo and Narcissus by New York-based artist Joe Salvatore; The Move, a play based on Mexican playwright Vicente Leñero’s La mudanza; and Requiem For New Orleans: A Hip Hop Eulogy, a compelling piece which recalls the social and political events immediately before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Requiem opened to critical success when it premiered at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival.
Vesce's work frequently explores the visual boundaries between theater performance and design and movement and is evidenced in many of his previous productions - from classic works like Antigone and Romeo and Juliet to innovative and topical works like the politically charged The Roots Of Coincidence, Street Song: The Rhythms of Langston Hughes (described critically as a visionary piece), and most recently The Tempest.
James is presently Associate Professor of Theater and Coordinator of the Undergraduate Program in Directing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His areas of interest and expertise include postmodern theater and performance, the direction and creation of new and experimental work in theater and musical theater, and community-based performance. James is a Respondent for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), a member of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, (SETC) and an Associate Member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC).
You can find out more about James' work in the theater by visiting his website at jamesvesce.com or his theater company website at twilightrep.com .
