The Big Switch: Connecticut Theaters Change Artistic Leadership
Long Wharf Theatre’s main stage
A Connecticut theater executive recently called it “the biggest change in American theater since the start of the regional theater movement in the ’60s.”
Joshua Borenstein, managing director of Long Wharf Theatre, was referring to the flood of openings for new artistic directors across the U.S., including at his own New Haven theater. In the past year more than two dozen theaters — some of the country’s major regional institutions among them — have kept search firms hyperactive. Never has such a massive leadership change happened at one time, spurring hope for a new and more diverse generation of artists waiting for their turn at the creative reins.
In Connecticut, two Tony Award-winning, half-century-plus theaters are in the final stages of finding fresh faces to reinvigorate the institutions. But who will they be and what will they represent?
Josh Borenstein of Long Wharf Theatre
Hartford Stage is seeking a successor to Darko Tresnjak, who is exiting in June 2019 after eight years. He’s leaving in a big way, too, with the premiere of his third new musical-with-Broadway-aspirations: The Flamingo Kid. Tresnjak’s career has been hot since he won a Tony for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder. This fall he’s launching the national and international tours of Anastasia. Both musicals, which premiered at Hartford Stage, will bring six-figure royalties to the theater for some time. Tresnjak also made his directing debut at the Met last month with Samson et Dalila and has more lucrative opera gigs ahead.
Gordon Edelstein’s exit at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre is a different matter. Edelstein kept the theater’s legacy alive during difficult financial times with productions of artistic excellence, many of them premieres by new as well as established playwrights, works that lived on in New York and beyond.