Roundabout Theater Company, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit theaters and a major player on Broadway, has chosen Christopher Ashley, a Tony-winning director who runs an influential theater in California, as its next artistic director.
Ashley is a prolific director, particularly of musicals with commercial aspirations, many of which he has developed at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, where he has been the artistic director since 2007.
He won a Tony Award for directing “Come From Away,” an inspirational heartbreaker about a Canadian community that welcomed thousands of passengers from flights that were grounded on Sept. 11, 2001. He received Tony nominations for directing the musical “Memphis” and a revival of “The Rocky Horror Show.” He has also directed some high-profile flameouts, including “Diana,” “Escape to Margaritaville” and “Leap of Faith.”
Just last week, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, an offshoot of the labor union representing American directors and choreographers, announced that next spring Ashley, who is 60, will be given the organization’s Mr. Abbott Award for his contributions to the American theater.
“I have loved my time at La Jolla Playhouse, and it’s a very hard place to leave, but the opportunities and possibilities of the Roundabout are impossible to deny,” Ashley said in an interview. “The possibility of programming in their five amazing spaces is exhilarating, and they have an amazing education program, and at a moment when theater is tremendously stressed, Roundabout is, and can continue to be, a real beacon.”
The transition will be gradual: Ashley plans to remain artistic director of La Jolla until Jan. 1, 2026, and to start full-time at Roundabout on July 1, 2026. Scott Ellis, who is Roundabout’s interim artistic director, will continue in that role until Ashley’s arrival.
In the meantime, Ashley has a busy slate of his own projects. He is directing Matthew Broderick in the political satire “Babbitt,” adapted from the Sinclair Lewis novel, and opening at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington next month (it had an earlier run at La Jolla); next year he plans to direct “3 Summers of Lincoln,” a new musical starring Brian Stokes Mitchell, at La Jolla, and Joe Iconis’s “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” at Signature Theater in Virginia (it also had an earlier run in La Jolla). Additionally, he has been collaborating with Cyndi Lauper on a musical adaptation of the film “Working Girl.”
Roundabout is the third of four nonprofit theaters with Broadway houses to announce new leadership in the last three months, after decades without turnover atop those organizations. Lincoln Center Theater named Lear deBessonet to succeed André Bishop, and Second Stage Theater named Evan Cabnet to succeed Carole Rothman. There is also a wave of leadership turnover occurring at regional and Off Broadway theaters; most recently, New York’s Signature Theater announced Emily Shooltz as its next artistic director.
Founded in 1965, Roundabout occupies a singular position in American theater. It is the largest nonprofit on Broadway, controlling three of Broadway’s 41 houses — Studio 54, the Stephen Sondheim and the Todd Haimes. The Haimes is named after Roundabout’s longtime leader, who died last year.
The organization’s large footprint has also brought large costs, and to its detractors Roundabout has become as much a landlord as a producing entity, because it generally rents out much of its Broadway space to commercial producers. The organization was once known for large-scale musical revivals, but, facing a supersized version of the same financial headwinds that have challenged much of the nonprofit theater sector, has leaned toward small-cast plays in recent years. (Roundabout returns to form next spring, with a full-scale revival of “The Pirates of Penzance.”)
But Roundabout, which also has an Off Broadway theater, the Laura Pels, and a black box theater where it presents work by emerging artists, continues to boost the careers of numerous artists and improve the fortune of plays and musicals. Among its many distinctions: Roundabout produced the last two plays to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama. This year’s winner, Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust,” was staged at the Laura Pels, and last year’s winner, Sanaz Toossi’s “English,” ran Off Broadway as a co-production at Atlantic Theater Company; Roundabout plans to stage “English” again on Broadway early next year.
The organization has an annual operating budget of $70 million. Its board chairwoman, Katheryn Patterson Kempner, wrote in an email that, “while the post-Covid landscape in the industry is still challenging, Roundabout is well positioned financially.” Ashley agreed, adding that he was mindful that Roundabout “is not immune to the forces hitting every American nonprofit. It had an extraordinary number of subscribers, and it has fewer now, but the strength of the staff is extraordinary and the family of artists who have worked there is remarkable.”
At the time of his death, Haimes held the titles of artistic director and chief executive; Ashley will be artistic director, and the board will conduct a search for a managing director who will serve as his partner in leading the organization.
In California, Ashley has managed to remain an unusually active figure in developing new work. La Jolla Playhouse, which has a strong emphasis on staging premieres, is among the handful of elite regional theaters that regularly nurture productions that wind up on Broadway. La Jolla originally developed and produced three of last season’s new Broadway musicals: “The Outsiders,” which won the best musical Tony, as well as “Harmony” and “Lempicka,” which are no longer running. This season’s “Redwood,” a new musical starring Idina Menzel, was originally developed and produced by La Jolla.
Ashley, who lived in New York throughout his pre-California time as a freelance director, and who has held onto an apartment in the city while based in San Diego, said that at Roundabout he expects to program plays and musicals, classic and new. He characterized his interest in musical revivals as “enormous,” but also said, “I hope and intend to do more new musicals at Roundabout than has been past practice.” And will they be crowd-pleasers or artistically ambitious? “People think there’s the dichotomy that’s implied in that question,” he said, “but bold can be popular and popular can be bold, and I want to program that way.”
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