Life and career

Rachel Lee Carter was born in Searcy, Arkansas. She began her theatrical career at Harding Academy in Searcy and continued it at Harding University, where she won female performer of the year for 1994-95. Her early career was marked by dramatic success and multiple acting awards.

After getting her BA from Harding University, she formed the Persnickety Players Drama Ministry, a small touring troupe focused on sacred drama, with Scott Hale in Oklahoma City. Her graduate degrees from Oklahoma City University (MPA) and the University of Oklahoma (MFA) focused on acting and directing respectively. She has directed and starred in dozens of plays.

The Oklahoma Gazette named the productions of On the Verge of the Geography of Yearning and Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, both directed by Carter, to their list of Top Five dramatic events in 2003 and 2005, respectively. Carter's directorial prowess generally receives praise from local journalists and critics, though some have noted their reservations. She splits her time between adjunct teaching at Oklahoma City universities, grant writing, several directing projects, and the occasional onstage appearance.

She has served as Artistic Director for OKC Theatre Company since 2010 where she directs plays and oversees 6 theatre productions and the Native American New Play Festival annually. She teaches classes in UCO's Mass Communications Department and Oklahoma City Community College’s Theatre program.

The Oresteia

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Carter's MFA thesis involved recasting The Oresteia in a way that demonstrated her commitment to artistic integrity and to bringing a wide range of theatre experiences to the local community. Her full-scale rendering of Aeschylus’ Oresteian Trilogy (a classic of Greek tragedy, uniting the narratives of Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides) included a traditional Greek chorus (complete with handmade masks) and an original musical score crafted to complement Carter’s own painstakingly edited script. Modern productions of Greek tragedy rarely aim for such historical and aesthetic authenticity.

Selected plays

• Directed Ordinary People, a play based on the novel by Judith Guest, March 1-2, 8-9, 2002.
• Directed Quilters, a play about pioneer women, April 18-20, 2002.
• Directed The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, April 5, 18, and 19, 2003.
• Directed On the Verge, or The Geography of Yearning on November 14, 2003. This production was named one of the Top Five dramatic events of 2003 by the Oklahoma Gazette.
• Directed the musical Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, November 3-5, 2005.
• Directed Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, a dramatic take on the classic Charles Dickens novel, but this time the story focuses on the afterlife of Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, Marley (who must escape his chains by redeeming Scrooge). The play ran December 2-22, 2005. It was named one of the Top Five dramatic events of 2005 by the Oklahoma Gazette.
• Directed The Rimers of Eldritch, a play which deals with the issues of sexual exploitation and murder, February 15, 2006.
• Directed Little Women February 17 & 18, 24 & 25, 2006. The play is based upon the book by Louisa May Alcott and adapted for the stage by Mariod De Forest.
• Directed the musical Little Shop of Horrors, November 2-4, 2006.
• Directed Electra (February 16-17, 23-24, 2007), the first Greek tragedy ever produced at Oklahoma Christian University.
• Directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the famous play by Tennessee Williams, late in the 2007 spring season for the Oklahoma City Theatre Company.
• Adapted the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for a stage production at the Oklahoma City Theatre Company, October 2007.
• Directed West Side Story for Oklahoma Christian University's Homecoming, November 2007.

Recent roles

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Carter returned to the stage to star in several roles in the Oklahoma City Theatre Company's production of Nickel and Dimed, a dramatization of Barbara Ehrenreich's popular non-fiction book of the same title. The play focuses on the lives of working class women. It ran from April 14, 2006 through May 7, 2006. She played the role of Grendel's mother in a new play called Wealhtheow's Dream. The play is an adaptation of the early English epic, Beowulf. (Wealthteow is Hrothgar’s wife.) The show was one night only: April 26, 2006. She played Calpurnia in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Oklahoma City Theatre Company on 10 November 2006.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]