The search is on to replace artistic director, who will leave after seven years to ‘have a more expansive and personal response artistically to the world’

By SHARON EBERSON

Marya Sea Kaminski, who guided Pittsburgh Public Theater through the pandemic shutdown and embraced innovative technology and community outreach, is departing the company after seven years as artistic director.

Kaminski will stay on until July of this year, while the 50-year-old company’s Board of Trustees, in partnership with Management Consultants for the Arts, launches a nationwide search to name her successor.

Her finale as director will be a musical version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, an ambitious project that connects the Pittsburgh theater with Public Works National Affiliates, including Seattle Rep, where Kaminski was associate artistic director and a founding partner of Public Works before coming east. 

Kaminski, 47, said she is “nestled” in her Polish Hill neighborhood and has no plans to leave Pittsburgh. She is finalizing plans for Public’s 51st season, giving her successor time to get acclimated, and hopes to return as a director.

In explaining why the timing is right to leave her administrative post, Kaminski first looked back on what drew her to Pittsburgh seven years ago.

She was not seeking a new job at the time, she said, but when the opportunity came her way, “I really felt like I could be of service here, and I wanted to lead, and I wanted to fight for the vital role that a theater like the Public plays in our community. And I feel like I have rediscovered my own vitality through that,” Kaminski said.

She described the feeling then as “being called here,” and now, “I am being called back to making. I want to write, I want to teach. I want to have a more expansive and personal response artistically to the world, and cast a vision that is outside the parameters of the Public’s mission. And so that’s why it’s the right time for me.”

Shaunda McDill joined the Public as managing director of the expansive company in April 2023. She has known for almost a month that her co-leader is departing, but she is still going through the stages of grief, she said. 

McDill, who has extensive experience in arts management and nonprofit leadership, got to know Kaminski while still at the Heinz Endowments, before coming to the Public and partnering with the artistic director on dozens of initiatives in a very short period.

“One of the things I’ve heard Marya say is, we’re at a place of strength that I haven’t seen for the Public in some time, coming back from COVID,” McDill said.

Among the positive signs following the post-pandemic downturn in theater-going worldwide, the subscriber base grew by 500 new households between last year and this year, McDill said. 

Bringing audiences back to the 650-seat O’Reilly Theater, The Public’s home in the heart of the Pittsburgh Cultural District, has sparked a wave of initiatives since Kaminski arrived to succeed Ted Pappas, following his unprecedented 18-year reign.

The Public reports that during Kaminski’s tenure, the company “increased diverse representation by almost 400%, broke the company’s box-office record with her 2020 production of Little Shop of Horrors, and produced five world premieres.

Those included last season’s Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, a new biomusical about the Pittsburgh native, with a book by Rob Zellers, with Kent Gash. The production was devastated by illness after a justifiably ballyhooed opening.

Despite COVID-19 shutdowns and interruptions, Kaminski, 47, has “increased the Public’s investment in Pittsburgh-based art and artists through a Resident Artist program, the Public Playwright Collective, and, this season, introduced the Core Company and Critical Insight.”

Upon her arrival, Kaminski invited fellow theater Pittsburgh leaders to The Public for an Artistic Roundtable summit, resulting in an extraordinary photograph of unity, a moment frozen in time, and met with local artists as well.

Too soon, they all would be faced with a devastating shutdown that put the word “pivot” into overdrive.

Within days of announcing a new Public season, the shutdown on March 13, 2020 also was the eve of what was to be the opening of the drama American Son, which was canceled along with the rest of the season.

“I think I was brought here to launch a bit of an evolution for The Public.”

Kaminski quickly became a calming presence on home screens as she pivoted the Public as the first Pittsburgh theater to connect online. Within a week, Zoom links were available to hear her introduce the Public PlayTime series, reading excerpts from Shakespeare’s Henry V. On March 26 and 27, 2020, local and national artists joined in a reading – within those now familiar Zoom grids – of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It was the more than 30 such readings that became oases for theater-lovers during the pandemic.

That led to a full-throttle online series of readings, including commissions from local playwrights, under the Public PlayTime banner. 

“I had been on Zoom once – Risa Brainin, who directed Indecent [at The Public], loved Zoom. At that point, we flew designers and directors out here to meet together,” Kaminski recalled. “I hated Zoom. I didn’t understand it. But two things were true at that time. One is, I have friends in Seattle, and the pandemic had hit Seattle about three weeks earlier, so I knew that we were not coming back soon. And I needed [theater] as everybody else. Brian Pope and I look back on that now, and we’re like, ‘32 readings, what were we thinking?’ But it absolutely buoyed me to have purpose.”

When we were able to gather outdoors in August of 2021, The Public took advantage with a production of the comedy Barefoot in the Park, on the stage at the Allegheny Overlook Pop-up Park on Fort Duquesne Boulevard.

Jump forward to 2024, and The Public’s 50th season has had Kaminski looking back to the Before Times, at the leaders who preceded her, dividing each into an era of growth: Ben Shaktman (with Margaret Rieck and Joan Apt) was the founder, Bill Gardner elevated the productions and Eddie Gilbert, who presided over the professional premiere of August Wilson’s Jitney and the company’s move from the North Side to its current Cultural District home. 

“That was huge,” Kaminski said. “And then Ted [Pappas] made us a leading artistic presence Downtown. And if I try to put my own time here through that lens, I think I was brought here to launch a bit of an evolution for The Public.”

She hopes her own “blip of the legacy … is about believing in investing in Pittsburgh artists. I think this community is astonishing. I think too often we define excellence by what’s out there rather than what’s right here. So Mark Clayton Southers, Jose Perez, the Playwrights Collective, Jamie Agnello …. I just feel like we have really genius people right here. So I just want to take that opportunity to say if there’s one thing I am most proud of, it’s that.”

Artistically, she has some favorites, and starts with The Tempest, starring Tamara Tunie and an all-female-identifying cast, which kicked off 2019

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said with a laugh. “I’m so proud of that. I look at the production now, and I can’t believe this happened. And Tamara Tunie sort of signed on, sight unseen,” Kaminski said.

She added A Few Good Men, collaborating with Billy Jenkins and other military veterans in the cast, and the success of Little Shop of Horrors as times when it seemed like, “I was cracking the code. So both of those feel great.”

Post-pandemic, The Public also has created an annual holiday event, with a lavish production of A Christmas Story: The Play.

Last year, The Public’s team continued to grow, with Sarah Ashley Cain as associate artistic director, Toby Guinn as chief development officer and Dominique Briggs as senior manager of Public Works and partnerships. 

In a first for the company, that Twelfth Night Public Works production will welcome “dozens of citizen artists” onto the O’Reilly Theater stage, alongside pros, in a large-scale musical that is the culmination of season-long partnerships with Vintage Senior Center, Mount Ararat Community Activity Center, the Filipino American Association, the Bhutanese Community Association and Sarah Heinz House. All tickets for this production will be free to the public. 

Kaminski also brought her managing director front and center, starting with managing director Lou Castelli. He left after 24 years with the company, succeeded by McDill, who Kaminski has embraced as a “co-lead” of The Public.

With McDill’s arrival, The Public has become a presenter of New Horizon Theater productions, converting its third-floor Helen Wayne Rauh Rehearsal Hall into an intimate theater while also offering advice and services to the company whose mission is advancing Black arts, and that was named a Heinz Endowments’ “Pittsburgh Cultural Treasure.”

For McDill, a high point of Kaminski’s artistic leadership was the ambitious world-premiere musical about Pittsburgh native Billy Strayhorn, with Billy Porter as a producer, Kent Gash as director, music direction by Matthew Whitaker and starring Broadway’s Darius de Haas.

When a portion of the run was canceled due to illness, hoping to mitigate some of the lost revenue, The Public in a flash offered a big-screen, high-quality video capture of the musical at the O’Reilly, for those patrons willing to make the pivot with them.

When McDill arrived at The Public, the course to premiering Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For was already in motion. 

“All signs pointed to, ‘Don’t take this type of risk right now,” McDill said, “And that kind of brilliance that I’ve been able to sit and watch in her has been an honor.”

She continued, “That pivot with the virtual screening is indicative of who Marya is. It takes the ability to put ego aside to go online and read and say, ‘Well, we’re going to pivot to virtual plays.’ It takes courage. There are several examples in her tenure and things that we’ve been inspired to do together that show we truly do want to explore and do the things that we believe can make change, and we are willing to take the risks, mitigated risks, and try to make them happen together.”

Passing the credit down the line, Kaminski said, “It was a defining moment. I had the honor and challenge of being the leader during that time, but it was our staff that made the shift in 24 hours.”

One reason they were able to bring the show to the screen was The Public’s embrace of digital platforms, including Streamland!, which was launched to deliver “cinema-quality digital versions of The Public’s mainstage productions alongside curriculum-based educational materials” to classrooms nationwide. The Public also is a member of The League of Live Stream Theater, which linked home viewers to Dragon Lady at the O’Reilly Theater.

At home and in person, The Public has continued to present the local Shakespeare Monologue & Scene Contest, and last year, was host to The National August Wilson Monologue Competition.

The Public has not been retaining long held practices and taking risks in a vacuum. The past year has seen a “cultural assessment,” McDill said, with the key word “rigor” as one of the outcomes.

“Other things that rose to the top were humor, collaboration and quality,” she said. 

Working with a data-collecting company, The Public has been studying the makeup of its subscribers, particularly the new households, and what might bring them back food more and recommend The Public to friends. 

McDill said they are paying attention to details, such as, “If they told us they like hard cider, so if they’re at the bar and we don’t have any hard ciders, what does that mean in terms of serving the people who come to see our performances?”

McDill can’t see the future past Kaminski’s exit, but in looking back on her two years partnering with the artistic director, she said her purpose has been “trying to marry the management of the organization with Marya’s amazing and excellent vision.”

Of her own future, Kaminski said she is working on a collaboration with friends in Arizona and New Mexico, and, as a performer – she does that, too – has plans to get back onstage. 

“I’m about to do Crave in Seattle to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Washington Ensemble Theatre, which is insane,” said Kaminski, who appeared in the Sarah Kane play in 2006. 

Beyond that, “I do hope to be back to direct here next season as part of the incoming season. So yeah, I think I have just enough sort of markers in the next year or so to keep me inspired and keep me moving, but also to be able to open my heart to what is next.”

Categories: Company, Feature, Feature Stories, Our Posts, Venue

Tags: Artistic Director, Exit Date, Marya Sea Kaminski, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Shaunda McDill