Richard Lord, Site Founder and Managing Editor

Richard Lord has lived in Philadelphia, the Greater Boston area, London, Frankfurt (Germany), Rome, and Singapore.

He began his career in theatre as the staff theatre reviewer for two Boston weeklies. Two years later, he moved to the other side of the stage, first as a playwright, then as a director, and then as an actor. His plays have been performed in Boston, London, Frankfurt (Germany) and Singapore.

Lord was the co-founder of two pub theatre companies in Frankfurt, Germany: the Mainstream Theatre Company and Just Us. Mainstream Theatre Company eventually performed two trilogies of one-acts at the Intenationales Theater Frankfurt. He also co-wrote, co-directed and acted in A Kingdom For A Stage, a two-person anthology of scenes and speeches from Shakespeare that performed in a Frankfurt suburb and in Stuttgart, Germany.

Two of his stage plays were broadcast as radio plays by BBC World Service, the second of which (The Boys At City Hall Discuss A Whole Mess of Important Subjects As Well As Some Other Things) was a BBC Highlight of the Month. His ten-minute play, Exchanges, won Best Play, Best Actress and Best Actor awards at the first Singapore Short & Sweet Festival.

His performance as the man (He) in G.B. Shaw’s Village Wooing for Frankfurt’s English Theatre won praise in the International Herald Tribune and the Frankfurter Rundschau.

His direction of Murder in the Howard Johnson (Frankfurt Military Theatre) and direction of two one-acts in a short play trilogy were highly praised in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung. His performance as Wystan in Head Over Heals, one of the three plays from the trilogy, was also praised in that latter review.

Richard Lord was the theatre critic for the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore (a.k.a., QLRS) from 2001 until early 2008. He was the lead performing arts reviewer for the Philadelphia Free Press and University City Review from February 2019 until December 2021, when the papers suspended operations pending further developments.

The desire to keep readers informed about what’s happening in Philadelphia area stages, parks and clubs impelled Lord to start this blog, which will continue to report on performing arts in the region.