Actor, director, set and production designer, librettist, choreographer, musician, producer and impresario, the Artistic Director of Lyric Opera San Diego, J. Sherwood Montgomery (Jack), is truly a renaissance man of the theatre.

Born in Chicago, at the age of three he moved with his family to San Diego where he attended Florence and Montezuma Elementary Schools and Horace Mann Junior High School. While still in school he began his professional career as section leader and soprano soloist at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown San Diego. He also appeared as a soloist in Handel's Messiah and sang on the radio.

When his voice change ended his career as a boy soloist, Jack moved on to being a performer with the San Diego Junior Theatre where he met and worked with the soon to be famous San Diego actor Victor Buono. While attending Crawford High School, he started acting with Starlight Theatre. At San Diego State University on a full scholarship, he studied set design and, on becoming President of the Aztec Theatre Guild, served as student producer (which included holding the purse strings) of all of its shows. He also continued his association with Starlight and spent some time at the Old Globe where Craig Noel became his mentor and friend.

Jack was a staging assistant at San Diego Opera in its early days, working with Walter Herbert and Peggy Kellner. He started by painting sets, then designed the 1967 production of Puccini's Tosca with Placido Domingo as Cavaradossi. He was paid $5,000 and the set was panned by the critics.

After receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont Jack went on, in 1969, to become artistic director at the Circle Arts Theatre on Kearny Mesa with San Diego Artists Incorporated, an organization he founded. This led to a career as a stage designer in regional theatres throughout the country, and he spent time in Hollywood as scenic designer at ABC television and Universal and MGM studios. Moving to the Missouri Repertory Theatre, he designed sets for John Houseman who employed him at the Drama Division of New York's famous Juilliard School. From there, he went on to Atlanta's Alliance Theatre as head costume and set designer. He was then tapped to become the Artistic Director of the oldest community theater in the country, the famed Resident Theatre of the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri. He was chosen by Joyce Hall to consult on Hallmark theatre projects to be included in that company's Crown Center Plaza development.

Moving to Chicago, Jack worked as co-producer and artistic director of both The Professional Performing Company at Kennedy-King College and the Shawnee Festival Theater in Bloomfield, Indiana. During an eight-year period with these two regional theatres he produced more than 60 productions. He was also involved in the founding of Chicago Opera Theater, served on that organization's board of directors and designed the productions for its first two seasons.

Returning to San Diego in 1986, Jack has directed, designed and produced at Starlight, The La Jolla Stage Company, Poway Center for the Arts, The Village Vaudeville, The Coronado Playhouse and San Diego Opera. He was Associate Artistic Director of Comic Opera (now Lyric Opera San Diego) for three seasons prior to being designated Artistic Director of the company in 1998.

Jack was commissioned by San Diego Opera to write the libretto for a children's opera, Rip van Winkle, in 1989. As part of San Diego Opera's Education and Outreach program, this show has introduced thousands of San Diego children to the joy of opera. He was also stage director for the San Diego Opera Ensemble. Later, with composer Nicolas Reveles, he wrote and directed the operas Sleeping Beauty and Rupelstiltskin, also for the Ensemble.

As an actor, Jack's roles have included that of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tim Roof, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Horace Vandegelder in Hello Dolly. He has appeared with San Diego Opera as Ambrogio in The Barber of Seville and Frosch in Die Fledermaus.

Listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Arts, Jack Montgomery was honored in 2005 by Theta Alpha Phi, the National Dramatic Arts honorary fraternity.

By far Montgomery's biggest production challenge began when he and his Lyric Opera San Diego partner Leon Natker decided to acquire the old North Park Theatre and renovate it as cultural home for opera, plays, chamber music, dance, and film. Leon and Jack supervised every step of the process themselves, creating the specifications, overseeing everything down to the smallest detail and insisting on the best values, not the cheapest. The result is the magnificent Stephen and Mary Birch North Park Theatre, winner of an Orchid Award.

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Revised May 2009
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