Senior Staff

KARYL LYNN BURNS

Rubicon Co-Founder/Producing Artistic Director

Karyl Lynn founded Rubicon with husband James O’Neil in 1998 and has overseen more than 100 productions for the company, including the World Premieres of Daddy Long Legs (which has traveled to 15 U.S. cities and 4 countries and is currently running Off-Broadway); The Best is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman (NY Drama Desk Award); Lonesome Traveler (which transferred Off-Broadway and was nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Conviction (co-premiere with Bay Street Theatre); and Cheri Steinkellner’s Hello! My Baby. She also produced the West Coast BeckettFest, which brought international artists to Ventura for a month-long celebration of the works of Samuel Beckett. For over a decade prior to starting Rubicon, Karyl Lynn was CEO of State of the Arts, an arts management and marketing firm. Clients included Ventura Music Festival, New West Symphony, Ensemble Theatre Company, PCPA Theaterfest, Theatre League, Broadway Producer Normand Kurtz, and Tony Award-winning playwright Dale Wasserman. Karyl Lynn worked with students from Oak Meadow School who received the United Nations “Global 500” Award for their work on environmental issues. For The Dream Foundation, she produced a PSA directed by Mimi Leder and starring Jeff Bridges. As an event planner, Karyl Lynn and her staff coordinated the 10th Annual “Cool Comedy, Hot Cuisine” with Robin Williams, Howie Mandel and Bob Saget, emceed by Bob Costas. She managed and promoted a charity concert for Scleroderma Research with singer Sheryl Crow at the Santa Barbara Bowl and coordinated several charity film premieres. For Capps for Congress, she managed a luncheon with Hillary Clinton as keynote speaker. Karyl Lynn is also an Hello! My Baby (co-premiere with Bay Street Theatre); and Cheri Steinkellner’s Conviction (which transferred Off-Broadway and was nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Lonesome Traveler (NY Drama Desk Award); The Best is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman(which has traveled to 15 U.S. cities and 4 countries and is currently running Off-Broadway); Daddy Long Legs Karyl Lynn founded Rubicon with husband James O’Neil in 1998 and has overseen more than 100 productions for the company, including the World Premieres of award-winning actor and sound designer.

JAMES O’NEIL

Artistic Director Emeritus/Co-Founder, Rubicon Theatre Company

James is the Author/Director of the recent Off-Broadway hit Lonesome Traveler, A Journey Down the Rivers and Streams of American Folk, which received both Drama Desk and Outer Critic’s Circle Award nominations. Lonesome Traveler premiered at Rubicon in 2011 and began a National Tour in the Fall of 2016. Lonesometravelermusical.com Jim’s Rubicon directing credits include Man of La Mancha, Fiddler on the Roof (Independent Award), Jesus Christ Superstar, A Delicate Balance, The Diary of Anne Frank (Independent Award), The Night of the Iguana, A Streetcar Named Desire (Independent Award), Driving Miss Daisy (NAACP Award), All My Sons (Ovation Award), Sylvia and Gem of the Ocean. Under Jim’s artistic leadership, Rubicon accepted the 2012 Drama Desk Award for The Best is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman. Other directing credits include The Lion in Winter, The Petrified Forest, Inherit the Wind and regional premieres of A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking and Drood! While on staff at Landmark Entertainment Group, Jim directed a multi-million dollar animatronics/special effects show in Japan, supervising all aspects of production and creative direction for themed attractions in Sanrio’s Harmonyland. As an actor, he received rave reviews as Pontius Pilate in the 1992-94 National Tour of Jesus Christ Superstar starring Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson and Irene Cara. Other roles include Dr. Prospero in the American regional premiere of Return to the Forbidden Planet at the American Heartland Theatre in Kansas City, John Adams in 1776, The Duke/Dr. Carrasco in Man of La Mancha, Adam in the first reading of Dale Wasserman’s Western Star and Claudius in the Rubicon’s production of Hamlet. He can be heard as Czar Nicholas II on the concept album Rasputin, written by Michael Rapp and starring Ted Neeley, John Hurt and Amanda McBroom; and as Quasimodo on Mr. Rapp’s Quasimodo, Prince of Fools. Later this season Jim will play his own fourth cousin Clarence Darrow, in the one-person play by David Rintels.