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Richard Squires (born 11 January 1949) is an American multimedia artist who has worked as an actor, writer, composer, director and visual artist. He wrote and directed the feature film Crazy Like a Fox for Delphi Film, starring Academy Award nominee Mary McDonald and Emmy Award nominee Roger Rees, released in 2006.

Early Life and Education

Richard Squires was born in Salt Lake City and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. His father was chief of staff to to a US Congressman. He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover in 1967 and attended Columbia University from 1967 to 1969, leaving to work as an actor for the Players Theatre of New England. He later studied philosophy at St. John’s College, Annapolis; and music composition at The Juilliard School in New York.

Theatre

After leaving the Players Theatre Squires worked as an actor at Brecht West Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. He also wrote for and directed the Brecht West’s children’s theatre while there. He moved to Paris in 1970, where he acted in The American Center theatre company, and worked with the Paris branch of the Bread and Puppet Theatre. He moved to Amsterdam in 1971 to act with the combined companies of La Mama Amsterdam and the Playhouse of the Ridiculous.

He wrote the words and music for [ ], which was presented in concert format at Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre in 1995.

Visual Art

In partnership with Argentinian artist Marta Minujin, Squires produced and presented Minu-Squire: two short plays written, composed, and directed by Squires, with a Happening at intermission orchestrated by Minujin, at the Protech-Rivkin Gallery in Washington DC in 1973. A year later at the Rivkin Gallery the two created Soft Gallery, an environment and performance venue in which Fluxus artists Charlotte Moorman, Ray Johnson, Al Hanson, Carolee Scheeman, Juan Downey, Jean Dupuy and others mounted performances and exhibitions. Soft Gallery was revived by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for its WACK! exhibition of 2007, continuing to New York, where it was revived with performances at the PS 1 Gallery of the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1974 Squires founded the Museum of Temporary Art in an abandoned commercial building three blocks from the White House in Washington DC. The museum presented the American premiere of Giron, the Cuban government’s film about the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as the American premiere of original footage of Neil Cassidy and Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus tour in a program called Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Under his successor Janet Schmuckal, the museum hosted Walter Hopp’s Thirty Six Hours exhibit, in which the curator, in a performance piece of sorts, remained at the museum for 36 continuous hours to accept works of art directly from their makers for the exhibition.

Film

Squires founded the Delphi Film Foundation www.delphifilm.com in 2001. He wrote, directed and produced two short features: Pinkie and Kangaroo Court (Best Picture, Barbary Coast Short Film Festival) in addition to the feature film Crazy Like a Fox (Best Picture, Charleston Film Fest; Best Director, California Independent Film Fest; Best Production, DC Independent Film Fest; and Best Cinematography, Woods Hole Film Fest). Crazy Like a Fox was invited or selected to more than a dozen festivals in the US and abroad, released theatrically in 2006, and distributed worldwide by Media Luna, Cologne.

Composition

Squires’ credits in composition include the music for The Fall of Albion, The Second Play, Pinkie, and Kangaroo Court.

His work has been featured or reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Los Angeles Times, Art Forum, the Village Voice, the Washington Post, Film Journal International, and PBS. He has been a fellow of both the National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer. He was awarded a scholar’s desk at the Library of Congress in the 1980’s to develop the Albion Cycle of plays.

His essays, interviews, and reviews on history and theatre have been published in the Washington Post’s Outlook, The Guardian, the Atlanta Constitution, Performance Magazine, Gnosis, Alternatives theatrales, Society and other publications. He has published online at Washington’s Blog, The Journal of Wild Culture, and the International Times.