In 1975, Eric Barr began a 37-year career as a founding member and longest-serving chair of UC Riverside’s Theatre Department. In addition to teaching, Barr directed more than 100 productions at UCR and beyond. His screenplays have been finalists and award winners at the Sundance Film Festival and Telluride Indiefest. He was also the artistic director of the Porthouse Theatre in Cleveland, taught acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory in Los Angeles, and worked as an acting coach with the National Theatre of the Deaf.

In May 2013, he suffered a series of devastating strokes that robbed him of his speech, movement, and teaching career. One year later, Barr returned to campus with “A Piece of My Mind,” a one-man show based on challenges he faced during his illness and recovery. He returned again to UCR in 2023 to give a Distinguished Emeritus Dickson Lecture that examined the connections between acting and recovery from life-changing events, and how he was able to use actor training to help reconstruct himself after losing speech, movement, and many cognitive abilities.