A Profile of Fred’s Career and Latest Projects
from BEACHWOOD BUZZ MAGAZINE
July 2018 Edition
By June Scharf
“I don’t know how 18-year-olds are supposed to know what they want to do in life,” says Fred Sternfeld, a 61-year-old Beachwood resident and avid local theater director. He clearly identifies with this issue since a direct career path eluded him early in his adult life. What he’d like to share with others who are experiencing this quandary is that it’ll be okay. He offers his own professional journey as a testament to his belief.
Producer-Director Fred Sternfeld
The latest and very noteworthy development in his life devoted to theater involves a producing role in the first Broadway revival of the 1991 musical The Secret Garden. It will be directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Warren Carlyle for an opening in the 2018-19 Broadway season. Well-known New York producers, Gerald Goehring and Michael F. Mitri of Patriot Productions, picked up the show’s option in 2017.
Goerhring, who has guest lectured in town at Baldwin Wallace University, notes that what he sees in Sternfeld is someone who “has a sensibility for what stories need and what artists and the creative team require to stage a play.” For this reason and others, he involved Sternfeld in the entire creative process for The Secret Garden, beginning with casting and employing many of his insightful notes.
“They (Fred and co-producer/wife Randi) understand what each department needs, and they have the theater experience and background that make them very good at this work,” Goerhring adds.
During a recent staging without sets or costumes for an audience of theater owners, producers, investors and tour operators, the show received two standing ovations, which is typically unheard of during this process, according to Sternfeld.
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