Eric Schaeffer
Artistic Director, Signature Theatre

In 1989, after a long day painting sets for The Arlington Players' community theater production of Oliver, young Eric Schaeffer and equally young Donna Migliaccio went out for a drink and got talking about the shortage of professional theaters on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. As Schaeffer tells it, he said "we should form one. A few days later she called and asked if I'd been serious." He was, and together they formed Signature Theater. In their first season they confined themselves to non-musicals but the second season brought a production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd which took the region's theatre community by storm and took five Helen Hayes Awards including one for Migliaccio, one for Schaeffer and one they shared as producers of the outstanding musical of the year. Since then, Signature has become an internationally acclaimed professional company and Schaeffer is an internationally known and respected director with Broadway and London's West End credits, a mantle full of Helen Hayes Awards and a full plate of projects. 

Career Highlights: At Signature Theatre, Schaeffer directed Sweeney Todd (twice), Allegro, 110 In The Shade, The Rhythm Club, Working, Passion, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Follies, The Gospel According to Fishman, The Fix, Grand Hotel, Over & Over and many others. He made his Broadway debut directing Carol Burnett and his West End debut in London directing The Witches of Eastwick. He was the artistic director of the Kennedy Center's unprecedented Sondheim Celebration in 2002 and personally directed two of the six productions of Sondheim musicals mounted for the celebration, Sunday in the Park with George and Passion.

After graduation from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, Schaeffer came to the Potomac Region to work for a design firm in Old Town Alexandria but soon he was volunteering in community theater and working at WETA - a "day job" he wasn't able to give up until 1996, by which time he had been nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for outstanding director three years in a row, winning twice for Sweeney Todd and Assassins. Signature had become a solid success first at Gunston's Theatre II and then in its own facility, a converted auto chrome plating shop on South Four Mile Run Drive just north of Shirlington. Some of the biggest names in musical theatre found it to be a marvelous place to work. John Kander and Fred Ebb, premiered Over & Over at Signature, Cameron MacIntosh picked Signature for the American premiere of Dempsey and Rowe's The Fix and the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization turned to Signature for the revision of Allegro.

New York first beckoned when the "Encores!" series of concert staging of great American musicals of the past asked Schaeffer to direct the Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein III musical Sweet Adeline. He directed Elmer Gantry in Chicago and Stephen Sondheim's musical Putting it Together at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles with Carol Burnett. That show turned out to be his Broadway debut. It seemed fitting since Schaeffer had developed a reputation as a major interpreter of Sondheim's work, having directed over half a dozen of his musicals.

While remaining Artistic Director at Signature, Schaeffer took on a role with the theatrical mega-corporation Clear Channel Entertainment with responsibilities for developing new works for the musical stage. He left Clear Channel at the end of 2003 with a number of projects still in the works including a new piece by Frank Wildhorn, Camille Claudel.  Shortly after the opening of Allegro at Signature, Schaeffer was off to California where he directed a new musical for Disneyland's Fantasyland Theatre, Snow White.

Potomac Stages reviews of Eric Schaeffer's work, predominately at Signature Theatre, as of 3-04-04:
Passion - Sondheim Celebration
Sunday in the Park with George - Sondheim Celebration
Allegro
Twentieth Century
Follies
110 In The Shade
The Christmas Carol Rag
The Rink
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Gospel According to Fishman