J. Burke Knapp was born in Portland, Oregon in 1913. After graduating from Stanford University in 1933 he was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford University from 1933-1936, after which he served four years working as an investment banker in London, England before returning to the United States to continue his career in international finance. Knapp served in various positions in the U.S. government until 1952, including senior roles with the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of State, as well as attending the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 which created the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and serving as a member of the Inter-Departmental Committee to prepare the Marshall Plan. In December 1952, he joined the World Bank as the Director of Latin American operations and was appointed Senior Vice-President and Chairman of the Loan Committee in 1956, serving in this position until his retirement in 1978. In 1939 he married first wife, British actress Hilary Eaves, who served as one of his first connections to the performing arts. From 1959-1968 he served as President of the board of Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage, assisting with raising money and expanding and restructuring the organization into a non-profit. He would remain on the board as a member until his death on November 22, 2009 at the age of 96.

One of the first not-for-profit theatres in the United States, as well as a pioneer of the regional theatre movement, Arena Stage was the first regional theatre to transfer a production to Broadway (The Great White Hope, 1967), the first invited by the U.S. State Department to tour the Soviet Union, and the first to receive a Tony Award. Founded by Zelda Fichandler, with assistance from her husband Thomas C. Fichandler and partner Edward Mangum, in 1950, Arena Stage was opened in Washington, D.C. to fill the void left by the closing of the National Theater in 1948. Deriving its name from the idea of "theater in the round," Arena Stage became one of the first resident theatres in the United States, beginning with a company of only eight actors. During the 1960s, Arena garnered international renown in its new space: the Arena Stage Theatre. The new building, located at Sixth Street and Maine Avenue SW, was the first playhouse built in Washington, D.C. since 1895. Generosity on the part of David Lloyd Kreeger, and others, led to the construction of the new "Kreeger Theatre," which opened formally on January 15, 1971. Today, Arena Stage performs to over 250,000 patrons during a September to June season and employs nearly 200 theatre professionals.