Asolo Rep leaders will step down in 2023 amid a wave of theater changes nationwide

Amid a wave of executive leadership departures at regional theaters across the country, Asolo Repertory Theatre has announced that Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards and Managing Director Linda DiGabriele will step down from their positions at the end of their current contracts in June 2023.

When he steps down next year, Edwards will have been the artistic director for 18 seasons, transforming the way the company produces theater and its connections to performers, designers and directors from major theater centers. He is the longest-serving artistic director in the theater’s history. DiGabriele will have worked for Asolo Rep for 50 years, 34 of them as managing director, making all the expansion and growth possible.

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In 2018, they each signed five-year contract extensions and said they were focusing on helping to develop future leaders for the theater. Asolo Rep’s board has formed a committee to oversee a national search for both positions.

The theater said Edwards and DiGabriele decided to leave together to allow a new executive team to create its own partnership to carry on Asolo Rep’s now 63-year history.

In a statement, Edwards said he and DiGabriele had “made a pact that we would leave together.” He said that looking back at the work they had done together and the way they overcame obstacles, “we knew it was the right time to make our exit.”

DiGabriele, in her own statement, said that working with Edwards for nearly two decades “has been extraordinary” and that with the staff and board “we have grown Asolo Rep’s stature as one of America’s leading regional theaters, with significant impact in our community and state.”

A look back at history: Look what Asolo Rep built in its first 60 years

Their decision comes as a generational shift is happening at professional, nonprofit regional theaters across the country. In some cases, founders or those who have led their companies for decades have decided to step down.

These transitions also come in the wake of calls for greater diversity among theater leaderships that grew out of the George Floyd protests and the emergence of the We See You White American Theatre movement.

Even before those protests, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which had been led by white men and one woman since its founding in 1935, got ahead of the diversity curve in 2019 when it hired Nataki Garrett as artistic director to succeed Bill Rauch, who left after 12 seasons.

This summer, Robert Falls will leave the Goodman Theatre in Chicago after 35 seasons. James Nicola, who oversaw the development of such Tony-winning shows as “Rent,” “Once,” “Slave Play” and “Hadestown,” will step down as artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop next month. He has led the company since 1988.

Julianne Boyd, who co-founded Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires in 1995, announced last fall that she would step down this season. Award-winning director Pam McKinnon took over at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in 2019, succeeding Carey Perloff, who had led the company for 25 years.

And two years ago, Emily Mann stepped down after 30 years as artistic director and resident playwright at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, N.J. She was succeeded as artistic director by Sarah Rasmussen.

In St. Petersburg, Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, who became the first artistic director of color in the history of American Stage when he was hired last summer, stepped down suddenly in early April “for personal reasons,” according to a statement from the theater.

Depending on how you count, Edwards is either the sixth or seventh artistic director at the Asolo since the company was founded in 1960 as a summer acting company with students from Florida State University by Richard Fallon. He was the longtime chair of the FSU School of Theatre.

Robert Strane and Eb Thomas shared artistic leadership for more than 15 years, before John Ulmer joined the theater in 1983, followed by the brief tenure of Megs Booker. Howard Millman, who had earlier served as managing director before moving on to positions at Pittsburgh Public Theatre and the GeVa Theatre in Rochester, N.Y., returned in 1995 as producing artistic director. He led the theater out of near bankruptcy during his 11-year run.

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota’s Asolo Rep leaders plan to retire after long runs next year