A proud member of Actor’s Equity Association since 1999, Richard Width began his theatrical career at age six dancing with the New Jersey Ballet Company in The Nutcracker and a member of the American Boychoir in Princeton. Before the age of eleven, he had performed in multiple productions of The King and I as Louis Leonowens with various professional theaters.
As a high school student, he attended the NJ Governor’s School for the Arts, trained with the McCarter Theater (where he worked with Nagle Jackson, Penelope Reed and Academy Award winner Ethan Hawke).
Later with NYC’s Ensemble Studio Theater (studying under J.R. Humphries award winner Gina Barnett).
He received multiple awards including the NJ Governor’s Award for Arts in Education, the NJ State Teen Arts Playwriting Award and a national Arts Recognition and Talent Search scholarship along with such luminaries as Ty Taylor (Vintage Trouble) and Tony, Grammy and Golden Globe winner, Billy Porter.
He graduated cum laude from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts with a BFA in Theater along with such extraordinary talent as Peter Paige (‘The Fosters and ‘Queer as Folk’), Kim Raver (‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ’24’), Michelle Hurd (‘Picard’, ‘SVU’), Krista and Kaili Vernoff (‘Charmed’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’) and taught by Robert Chapline, John Lipski, Jim Spruill, Shelia Allen and Judith Chaffee.
Width performed, directed, wrote and taught with Guy Robert’s (Artistic Director, Prague Shakespeare Company) NYC’s Mermaid Theater Co., the Texas Shakespeare Festival and the Massachusetts based Rebel Shakespeare Company and continued to train at The Actor’s Studio‘s Tuesday work sessions with moderators including Lee Grant and Vivian Nathan.
In 1996, he accepting a full-time position as Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s (now Orlando Shakes) founding Education Director.
From that time thru the summer of 2003, he created all the department’s curriculum as well as developed and taught community and professional programming including In-School Residencies (ranging between one day and yearly in length) for both mainstream and ‘at-risk youth’, an Internship Training Program and the summer youth theater intensive, The Young Company. While at OST, Width performed, wrote and/or directed over 500 professional main stage, black box, youth and community theater productions, premiered multiple new plays and musicals including his adaptations of EM Forster’s Maurice, Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum and Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth for their New Play Festival.
Following his tenure, Width became the primary Upper School Theater teacher for Trinity Preparatory School,
teaching eighth grade through twelfth grade from 2003-2010. He continued to direct, write and act as an Associate Artist with OST directing their critically acclaimed 2010 production of Hamlet– the first production of the company to be nationally reviewed by the Wall Street Journal– as well as with RS&C Productions directing and playing Edmund in his female led Lear. He worked with The Orlando Theater Project directing Blackbird and The Compleat Works of Wllm. Shkspr. (abridged) as well as appearing in the Southeast premiere of Tuesdays with Morrie as Mitch, Almost Maine and as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play.
During his years as an Arts Educator, he received multiple Central Florida Arts in Education awards with former students including arts administrator Jay Shepherd, documentary filmmaker Veronica Harper Silver, actor Tony Robinette, actor/producer Kim DePersia, actor/producer Lexi Pappas, actor/producer David Vandenberg, writer/producer Dani Alcorn, musician Bryan Benner, actor Hunter Brown, Tony nominee Denee Benton, actor/performance artist Daniel Burns, actor/dancer Eddie Guttierez and many others.
His film and television work includes work with Vin Diesel on his directorial debut film Multifacial as Bob, Tim in Kieran Turner’s Romeo’s Flavor which premiered at the NYLGBT Film Festival, the series You, Me and Technology with Ethan Hawke for NJ Network, the short film Light and various under-five roles on All My Children, One Life To Live and The Guiding Light.
In 2018, he began working with his mother, psychologist Dr. Victoria Width, developing workshops around her book House It Up to provide educators the ability to use Shakespeare to help youths within the NJ Juvenile Detention system ground, grow and grapple with their challenges. Together, they presented their work in a highly successful seminar before some 100 educators and employees for the NJ Juvenile Justice Association.
Currently, Width works as a Palliative Care/Hospice RN with Center for Hope in Scotch Plains. Previously, he worked at Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, NJ as both a GIP Hospice and home Hospice RN roles as well as an Emergency Room RN with St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, NJ. He is actively working on a book about Hospice for the layperson. In April of 2024, he is shifting his home base to Rogers, Arkansas where he hopes to continue his work in the Arts as well as Healthcare.
He continues to train with Shakespeare and Company (Tina Packer, Dennis Krausnick, Karen Beaumont, Claire Warden) and The Writer’s Theater of NJ (John Pietrowski) as well as explore and develop artistic endeavors with various theaters including Shakespeare On The Fly (Artistic Director, Dave Demke) and First Flight Theatre Company (which focuses on the works of Maxwell Anderson, Artistic Director Frank Farrell), both of which he is a founding member.
Most recently, in October of 2023, his one woman adaptation of Dracula focusing on Mina premiered in the NYC Frigid Festival which allowed for his membership in the Dramatist’s Guild.
… and he co-founded a new film production company HurkleDurkle under the auspicious of award winning actor/director/writer Cullen Douglas for whom Width wrote his first spec screenplay Walking You To Heaven.
RICHARD WIDTH 