Theatre for a New Audience has announced Obie winner Arin Arbus as its next artistic director. Arbus will succeed Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz, who will step down August 31, as previously reported. The appointment follows a nationwide search led by Arts Consulting Group.
Arbus began working at TFANA in 2004 as an assistant on productions, a receptionist, and coordinator for the company's gala, before serving for over a decade as the theatre's first associate artistic director.
Arbus says she credits TFANA for its profound influence on her artistic development, and it was Horowitz who first invited her to direct Shakespeare. In 2009, Arbus made her Off-Broadway and TFANA directorial debut with Othello. Arbus' credits also include TFANA's Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, A Doll's House, Waiting for Godot, and more.
Outside of TFANA, Arbus' productions also include the world premiere of Deep Blue Sound by Abe Koogler for Clubbed Thumb, The Lehman Trilogy at Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C. and at The Guthrie in Minneapolis, the Tony-nominated revival of Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, starring Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon, and more.
Arbus is a Drama League Directing Fellow, a Princess Grace Award recipient, a TFANA Samuel H. Scripps Award winner, and an alum of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab. She has also been a guest professor of theatre at Yale, Juilliard, NYU, Brooklyn College, Fordham, Columbia, and The New School.
“It’s the greatest honor of my career to carry forward Jeffrey Horowitz’s remarkable legacy at TFANA, an institution that has shaped me and been my artistic home for the past 15 years," Arbus said in a statement. "I’m deeply inspired by the heart of TFANA’s mission. We produce Shakespeare today because his language and ideas illuminate the urgent questions of our time. And by presenting his plays and other canonical texts alongside today’s boldest voices, we engage in a civic dialogue that spans centuries, expanding the definition of ‘classical’—and shaping the canon of the future."
“Arin gets to the heart of what plays are about and why theatre is essential," added Horowitz. "She pushes boundaries and is profoundly unsatisfied by the satisfactory. Artists want to work with Arin. She is a wise and brilliant person with a gift of humor. Actors in her productions express the language and ideas of authors naturally and spontaneously. I am thrilled the Board has chosen Arin and that Arin has chosen to lead the theatre.�
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