RICHARD OUZOUNIAN has worked in the arts professionally for 48 years.
During that time, he has directed, written, or performed in nearly 300 shows
He has served as Artistic Director of 5 major Canadian theatres, been an Associate Director of the Stratford Festival of Canada for 4 seasons and was Harold Prince’s assistant on the original Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera.
He was Theatre Critic of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper, for 15 years and spent 14 years as the host of CBC Radio’s highly popular Broadway program, Say It With Music.
His own musicals of Dracula, Emily and Larry’s Party have played to record-breaking audiences across North America.
Since retiring from The Star, his stage productions include a 5-person staging of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, a new concert version of Porgy and Bess with Jackie Richardson, Unforgettable – a Nat King Cole biography starring Thom Allison and a major production of the Canadian epic, Napoleon, in South Korea.
In recent years at the Stratford Festival, he has directed The Fantasticks In Concert, starring Eric McCormack, as well as Chilina Kennedy in a newly revised concert version of Leslie Arden’s The House of Martin Guerre.
Ouzounian lives in Toronto, has been married for 43 years to his wife, Pamela, and has two children, Kat and Michael.