Bio

Peter recently left The Granada in Santa Barbara after eight years as the venue’s Executive Director. He also directed the theatre’s first in-house production, A Christmas Carol.

He received his M.F.A. in stage direction from Carnegie Mellon. As a nationally recognized teacher and coach, Peter has held faculty posts at Carnegie, The Juilliard School, Harvard University, Boston University, Cal Arts, and UCLA. He has taught and coached professional actors and directors in New York and Los Angeles over the last thirty years.

Prior to coming to Santa Barbara, Mr. Frisch served as Producer on The Young and the Restless for CBS-TV. He came to the show directly from Pittsburgh and a six-year stint as Head of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University's prestigious School of Drama where he also taught and directed for the mainstage. Moonlighting, he also directed seventeen events for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, working with musicians such as Mariss Jansons, Marvin Hamlisch and Rolando Villazon.

During the past 35 years, Peter has directed over 160 productions in the New York and regional theatre, including a full range of classic and contemporary plays, cabaret and opera. He has been Producing Director of the Hyde Park Festival Theatre (NY), Resident Director with the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Artistic Director of American Playwrights Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Peter received a Joseph Jefferson Award for the Chicago premiere of American Dreams (co-authored with Studs Terkel) and the Outer Circle Award for My Papa's Wine on New York's Theatre Row. At American Playwrights Theatre, his collaboration with Larry L. King led to a 1988 Helen Hayes Award for The Night Hank Williams Died. Also at APT, he won an inaugural Kennedy Center/American Express Grant for his production of Speaking In Tongues, about controversial film director Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Previously in Los Angeles, Peter served as a Producer on Fox Network's Tribes. Single camera direction includes the macabre comedy Deadication, winner of a "Best of the Fest" Award at the Seattle Film Festival.

Mr. Frisch has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Awards and served as a board member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. He is an enthusiastic amateur musician and has been published in a variety of journals from Stereo Review to The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.

Recognizable talents taught, coached or directed include: Albert Brooks, Laura San Giacomo, Julianne Moore, Michael Chiklis, David Ogden Stiers, Denyce Graves, Keir Dullea, Susan Lucci, Michael Tucker, Jill Eikenberry, Orson Bean, Judith Light, Grant Shaud, Kim Hunter, Andrea McArdle, Elizabeth McGovern, Lolita Davidovich, and many others.