About the Director of TAP’s Follies

CHRISTOPHER DYKTON, a native of the DC area, has bachelor degrees in both English and Philosophy from Loyola College in Baltimore and his masters in public administration from The American University. Since 1987, he has directed, performed or designed for more than fifty productions in the DC metropolitan area, including a job as Houdini’s stunt double in the first national tour of Ragtime. (Yes, he dangled 30 feet in the air and was blown up in a box about 120 times!)

With a family background in music (his father was a first clarinetist with the U.S. Marine Band), he studied the flute including classwork at Peabody Institute, and developed a love of the arts, particularly theater and dance. He trained as an actor and director at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE and as a dancer at the National Ballet in Maryland with Pamela Moore, Goucher College with Edith Clarke and Peabody with Thomas Hanner, the Boston Ballet and the Joffrey II. He was a recipient of a fellowship to Jerome Robbins Choreographers’ Workshop, where he studied under Mr. Robbins.

DC directing and choreography credits include Ragtime, On the Town, The Secret Garden, Damn Yankees, Steel Pier, The King and I, Saturday Night, (TAP); Nunsense (DS); A Chorus Line (RCP); 1776, The Cocoanuts (LTA). The artistic quality of his work has been recognized by the Alliance of Community Theatres, Ruby Griffith Competition and the Washington Area Theater Community Honors (WATCH). His first DC area production was TAP’s legendary On the Town, which won the Award for All Round Production Excellence in the Ruby Griffith competition, an award that his production of The Cocoanuts also received. In WATCH, both he as director and his productions as musicals have received the award twice – for both A Chorus Line and The Cocoanuts. Critics have heralded his direction in such different plays as The Women, Master Class, A Man for All Seasons, and Love! Valour! Compassion!

He has served on the boards of Signature Theatre and The Arlington Players, taught acting at Arlington’s The Children’s Theatre and pas de deux at the Arlington Dance Theatre, and been a guest speaker at the Theatre Lab.