Tony-winning director John Doyle will step down as artistic director of Off-Broadway's Classic Stage Company at the close of its 2021–2022 season, ending a six-year run with the company.
The news comes as the Off-Broadway company announces its return to in-person theatre, which will begin in November with the Doyle-helmed production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, a production that was originally planned for spring 2020. CSC has retained the entire cast of that planned production: Adam Chanler-Berat, Eddie Cooper, Tavi Gevinson, Brad Giovanine, Andy Grotelueschen, Bianca Horn, Judy Kuhn, Whit K. Lee, Rob Morrison, Steven Pasquale, Ethan Slater, Will Swenson, Wesley Taylor, Brandon Uranowitz, and Katrina Yaukey.
Doyle will also close out the season directing a new production of Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and Terrence McNally's A Man of No Importance, set to open in fall 2022. Centering on an amateur theatre group producing Oscar Wilde's Salome in Dublin, Ireland, the musical premiered Off-Broadway via Lincoln Center Theater in 2002.
"I will always treasure the privilege of having led this terrific company," shares Doyle. "I greatly look forward to my final season and am very excited for all that lies in CSC’s future. The performances in my final year at CSC are quite personal for me: with Assassins, we’re returning to our theatre with something we’ve waited so long to share, fulfilling a dream that has carried and uplifted me and the cast and creative team through so much turmoil, and sharing a work that speaks with excruciating relevance to the violent charge beneath American existence."
Also joining the 2021–2022 season are Marcus Gardley's reimagining of the Odysseus saga black odyssey, planned for winter 2022 in a production directed by Stevie Walker-Webb; and Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's Snow in Midsummer, directed by Zi Alikhan and set for spring 2022. Based on the classical Chinese drama The Injustice to Dou Yi That Moved Heaven and Earth, Snow in Midsummer is a murder mystery set against a community struggling with injustice and ecological disaster.
Doyle became CSC's artistic director in 2016, bringing his trademark stripped-down style to stagings of Carmen Jones, Allegro, The Cradle Will Rock, and Pacific Overtures, among others. Doyle is a Tony winner for his 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, and has also helmed Company, A Catered Affair, The Visit, and The Color Purple on Broadway.
