Westchester County native George Camarda has been a script supervisor for the past 25 years on television shows including The West Wing, Law & Order and Boardwalk Empire, and for feature films including, most famously, Boys Don’t Cry. Camarda has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has produced and directed short films and an off-off-Broadway play. He and his partner now divide their time between New York City, where Camarda works for the Motion Pictures Editors Guild, and Austerlitz, New York where he’s recently joined the board of Shakespeare & Company. I’ve been working in the film business for so many years — I’ve been a script supervisor for 25 years and before that I was a location scout. I worked in California producing music videos when they first came out. When I look back at my career, I think “Wow, I worked on that show and that show.” I’ve mostly done television work, and some films, but feature films are a much more difficult thing. With TV shows, you might have 10 or 13 episodes and then they hit the dust. My partner, David Murphy, is from Northampton, Mass., his sister lives in Pittsfield, and we have many friends who live in Dutchess County. We moved to Austerlitz about 6 or 7 years ago. My thing was “Where’s the culture and the restaurants and the people who you want to hang out with?” We’re on a dirt road that starts in New York and ends in Mass., so we have the Berkshires to the east and to the west we’ve got Hudson, so we’re well situated. For three months I was on jury duty with one of the directors I worked with on "Law & Order" and he introduced me to Shakespeare & Company. I was super impressed with what a professional and established company it was. I went to Emerson College for theater, but I never really worked in the theater. I’ve been working in film for all these years, and it’s interesting to go back to my roots. Growing up, summertime Shakespeare was always one of my favorite things to go to. So what speaks to me most about Shakespeare & Company is the campus and what that can become. Now they have two outdoor venues — one on their campus and one at the Mount. The way that Tina Packer and I related most when we first met was in talking about the potential for the facilities. The next step is establishing a more sustainable company and figuring out how to optimize what’s there. They have so many incredible programs, such as the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, that I think should be happening all over the country.
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