A Tony Retreat In Manchester: Director Darko Tresnjak's Modernist Minimalism
Darko Tresnjak, artistic director of Hartford Stage, and his husband, costume designer Joshua Pearson, were not in the market for a "weekend home in Manchester" when board member and Realtor Marla Byrnes, knowing of their interest in modernism, took them to see a Bauhaus-designed home in May 2015.
When the Tony Award-winning director sat in a Le Corbusier chair in the living room and looked out through the12-foot, sliding glass doors at the spacious deck and the calming vista of towering oaks, he thought, "Well, this is it. We're going to own it."
The Home's Curved Study
A series of descending abstract Russian figures by fashion designer Martin Margiela in the home's curved study is one of the few references to the musical "Anastasia," which Darko Tresnjak is directing on Broadway this spring, following its premiere last year at Hartford Stage, where he is artistic director. (Peter Casolino | Special to Hartford Magazine)More than a year later, the couple have put their own touches on their first home, a move-in ready house designed and built for the area's developer in 1969 by award-winning architect Charles Gwathmey, who did the 1992 renovation of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum.
The 2,283-square-foot, four-bedroom home on a hill near Case Mountain Park suits their less-is-more style mixed with a sense of the dramatic: A swooping, open-space living room with bleached cedar walls, cascades of natural light from all directions and stunning views of their 5.6-acre property give visitors the sense "that you're more outside than inside," Tresnjak says.