Griff Braley, Artistic Director

Biography

Griff has spent his entire life (yes, so far. . . ) in Maine, most of it involved in theater. After graduating with a BA in Theater from Bates College, he directed his first play at Wiscasset High School in 1983, where he continued to teach children's theater, mythology, speech, acting, technical theater, film and English until 2006. 

With more than sixty plays - including numerous original scripts and several award winning one act plays - under his belt at Wiscasset, Griff was invited to create a full theater and film program at Lincoln Academy. He teaches acting and film curriculum during the day and has led Lincoln's students to eleven State One Act Festivals in the last twelve years. (He's still a little upset about the one that got away!) His one act productions tend to focus on strong literary classics including Oedipus Rex, Electra, Birthday of the Infanta, Orpheus, Beowulf, Antigone, Macbeth, Blood Wedding, Beauty and the Beast, and Trojan Women.

In a creative collaboration between Lincoln and Heartwood, he marshals the resources to provide unique and comprehensive performing opportunities for students, as well as opportunities to work side by side with professionals in the theater, both onstage and in a new internship program, for student theater techs.

Griff's work came to include adults with his original production of Zeno's Arrow at Lincoln County Community Theater, in 1998. He then directed Fiddler on the Roof, Camelot, Peter Pan, The Little Prince, Face on the Barroom Floor and Secret Garden for the Chocolate Church, in Bath.

Since envisioning and founding Heartwood Regional Theater Company in the fall of 2003, Griff has acted as Artistic Director, producing and directing more than 80 productions, including Molly Sweeney, Les Miserables (twice!), Susannah, The Grand Design, Antigone, Blood Wedding, Man of LaMancha, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, All My Sons, Gilgamesh, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Crucible, Romeo and Juliet, Glass Menagerie, An Enemy of the People, Once on this Island, A Little Night Music, Little Women, Beauty and the Beast, Metamorphoses, Sunday in the Park with George, Pinocchio, Beowulf, As It Is In Heaven, See How They Run, The House of Bernarda Alba, Godspell, Four Quartets, Ghostwriter, Macbeth, The Legend of Jim Cullen and Fiddler on the Roof, Eleemosynary, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Lion,Witch and the Wardrobe, a fully revised Jim Cullen, Jekyll and Hyde, The NeverEnding Story, Cyrano de Bergerac, One Man Two Guvnors, Our Town, The Tempest, These Shining Lives, Merry Christmas, George Bailey, Charlotte's Web, Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, Into the Woods, West Side Story, Wiley and the Hairy Man, Bloomsday, and the upcoming summer season of Secret Garden, and his original play, Down Along the Cove.

His work at Heartwood includes sixteen years of summer program and outreach programs for students 3^rd to 12^th grade - offering training, play productions and visiting artist residencies for Midcoast schools.  His creation of original works and the opportunity to teach are two of his most important areas of focus.