Background
Scott was born in Morristown, New Jersey. His mother was a housewife and his father, Harold Russell Scott, Senior, was a general practitioner.
Scott was born in Morristown, New Jersey. His mother was a housewife and his father, Harold Russell Scott, Senior, was a general practitioner.
Scott was educated at Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard. He had a career as a stage director on Broadway and Office Broadway, but began as an actor of note, performing in Jean Genet"s The Blacks and an acclaimed production of the premiere of The Death of Bessie Smith by Edward Albee.
In 1984, Scott returned to Office Broadway to play Brutus in a modern dress production of Shakespeare"s Caesar with the Riverside Shakespeare Company at The Shakespeare Center under the direction of West. Stuart McDowell. Scott staged numerous innovative productions in New York and at regional theatres, including Morgan Freeman in The Mighty Gents on Broadway in 1978, and Avery Brooks in Paul Robeson on Broadway twice: in 1988 and again in 1995. Scott also directed the twenty-fifth anniversary production of A Raisin in the Sun, with Esther Rolle.
This production opened at the Roundabout Theatre in New New York
lieutenant then broke box-office records at the Kennedy Center in Washington, District of Columbia. Scott was head of the directing program at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He also taught classes in acting at the Equity summer-stock theater The Peterborough Players, in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1980, where he starred as Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, appeared in A Streetcar Named Desire, and once filled in with only hours notice for a sick actor in Garson Kanin"s Born Yesterday.
He was extremely well-respected and beloved by his acting students there, who remember his unique and impressive training well due to his intense, insightful, caring personality. He then continued on at the Peterborough Players as Staff Director, 1981-1985, Associate Director, 1985-1988, and Acting Artistic Director, 1989-1990.
In February 2006, Scott directed his final play, Yellowman, an examination of black-on-black prejudice, at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park where, in 1973 he began a two-year appointment as artistic director
He was the first African-American to have earned such in a major regional theatre.
Scott was chosen by Elia Kazan to be an original member of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, where he performed in Arthur Miller"s After the Fall and Incident at Vichy, and was cast by José Quintero in Thomas Middleton"s Changeling and in Eugene O"Neill"s Marco Millions.