Biography
Peter Goldfarb has been active as an international producer, director and actor in theatre, television and film for over 40 years. After beginning his career producing and directing in the New York Theatre, he was engaged by NBC as a Network Program Executive with a special mandate to create quality programming on a continuing basis. The result was the acclaimed NBC Experiment In Television series for which he produced and/or directed over thirty network films, specials and original dramas. During his tenure there, he was instrumental in the creation of the Movie of the Week and Docudrama formats. In recognition of his innovative programming, he was awarded: First Prize at the Chicago Film Festival; the George F. Peabody Award and several Emmy nominations, including one for his production of Federico Fellini's first made-for-TV film, Fellini - A Director's Notebook (on Criterion DVD). He then became Chief Production Consultant for a major film-financing consortium associated with such productions as Escape From New York,Superman II and Superman III. He also authored the screenplay for Ettore Scola's film Rocco Papaleo starring Marcello Mastroianni and Lauren Hutton.
In 1984, Mr. Goldfarb traveled to the Peoples Republic of China where he became the first American to negotiate and conclude an agreement between China and the United States for the production of a major motion picture, A World Full Of Dragons. In 1986, he produced, from the Soviet Union, Moscow/New York Live, a four-hour live satellite broadcast with an all-star cast. In 1990, by special permission of the authors, he produced and directed the World Premiere of the newly revised version of the renowned rock musical Hair. He then produced and directed for television the 100th anniversary production of the opera, Cavalleria Rusticana, currently in distribution throughout the world on VAI DVD. The success of this production, together with Mr. Goldfarb's longtime passion for and encyclopedic knowledge of opera, has resulted in additional projects for opera on video, a field in which he is considered a pioneer.
Mr. Goldfarb has served on the jury of many international film festivals and was Chairman of the Jury of the Chicago Film Festival. For his non-commercial work, he has been awarded grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques of France.
In his career as an actor, he has performed on stages in New York and throughout the US starring in such roles as "Sir" in Ronald Harwood's The Dresser (Drama-Logue award for Best Actor and Best Production), "Mashkan" in Jon Marans' Pulitzer Prize nominated Old Wicked Songs (Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor), "Tevye" in the Clarence Brown Theatre production of Fiddler On The Roof, Dostoyevski's The Idiot, at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre in New York, as "Tennessee Williams" in Daniel Macivor's His Greatness at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York. He also wrote and performed both at the Havana International Theater Festival and at the First International Fringe Festival in San Miguel, Mexico, his one-man show Fragments of a Life In The Theater. His most recent appearance was the premiere of the playwright Michael Perrie's one-man show An Evening with The World's Greatest Actor, in which he was hailed as "a miraculous actor, rare and unique."
In Europe Mr. Goldfarb created and directed The Voyage Project, wherein a company of actors from Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Israel and the US, address the personal and collective upheavals and life-changing events in their respective homelands. The production has thus far been performed at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania, Mittelfest and the Spoleto Festival in Italy and the Theatre of Nations Festival in Manila.
Additional productions include the direction of a multi-media stage adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in collaboration with Philip Glass at the Asia Society, New York; and The Dream Project, the creation in Mexico City of an ensemble theatre piece based on the actor's dreams.
Concurrent with his commercial work, Mr. Goldfarb has had a long-standing dedication to the education of young professionals and is much in demand as a teacher, lecturer, panelist and seminar leader. He has taught at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles and, in New York, at the Actors Process and the Young Filmmakers Foundation. He is a founding faculty member and former Trustee of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado where he established (for the first time outside of France) an MFA Theatre Program based on the two-year training of the renowned Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. Mr. Goldfarb is a former trustee and Executive Committee member of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center as well as a co-founder of the International Shakespeare Summer Academy in England where he directed "Macbeth Moments" which subsequently played at the Edinburgh Festival. He has both taught and directed at the National Theatre Conservatory of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the Theatre School at New York's Circle In The Square. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Playwrights Horizon Theatre School and at the Summer Institute of the National Theatre of the Deaf. He is a former President of the International Theatre Institute Training and Education Committee and travels extensively teaching, lecturing, conducting seminars and participating in theatre conferences and festivals. Fluent in French, Italian and Spanish, he has conducted workshops and master classes at major theater schools and institutions in many countries throughout Europe, Asia, Mexico and South America.
