Jeff Downing is a Theatre Director, Designer, Teaching Artist, and Playwright with over 20 years of experience producing a wide range of plays and musicals. With an emphasis on Theatre for Young Audiences and Theatre Education, he has directed over 50 productions and designed scenery and costumes for over 100.

He moved to New York City after graduating from the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music with an emphasis in set design. Jeff’s early years in New York were spent working as a freelance set designer, as well as a teaching artist and director. He created a theatre curriculum for the after school program at PS89 in Queens, and began working with the Play Group Theatre in White Plains, where he worked for almost ten years. He taught a variety of classes and directed 25 productions, eventually becoming the company’s first Associate Artistic Director. 

Jeff is also the co-founder of The Wide Awake Theatre Project, a youth summer theatre program that brought NYC teaching artists to small communities with limited opportunities in theatre education.

In 2012, Jeff moved to Helena, Montana to become the Artistic Director for Grandstreet Theatre. Over the past ten years at Grandstreet, he has produced classic musicals, contemporary dramas, Shakespeare, theatre for young audiences, and everything in between. He passionately believes that you don’t need to be in a big city to have great theatre, and works tirelessly to produce some of the finest theatre in the Northwest. 

He is the playwright of three original works; Once Upon a Time, Toby and Walter, and most recently; A Real Boy, a queer reimagining of the classic story, featuring Pinocchio as a gay fairy tale hero.

His work in the theatre has allowed him to wear many hats, both onstage and off. Directorial highlights include Seussical, The Laramie Project, A Man of No Importance, The Secret Garden, Zanna Don’t, Marvin’s Room, Grand Hotel, A New Brain, Into the Woods, Next to Normal, Rabbit Hole, Baskerville, The Book of Will, Murder on the Orient Express, Admissions, She Loves Me, Billy Elliot, and Hairspray.

Favorite design projects include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sideways Stories From Wayside School, Barnum, The Cake, Treasure Island, The Tempest, Speech and Debate, Mothers and Sons, Shrek the Musical, Every Brilliant Thing, and Ragtime.

Some of his favorite roles include Marvin in Falsettos, the Baker in Into the Woods, Adam in Next Fall, the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, Tateh in Ragtime, and Pinocchio in his own original play, A Real Boy.