Kent Gash, the founding director of Tisch School of the Arts’ New Studio and former associate artistic director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, has been named the new artistic director of The Acting Company.
The director, actor, educator, and author succeeds Ian Belknap, who announced his departure earlier this year.
An arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Gash also served on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. He has directed productions at numerous theatres around the country, including the Public Theater and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Gash's staging of Choir Boy will be seen at Steppenwolf in the summer of 2022. He currently serves on the Arts Advisory Board of the Princess Grace Foundation and on the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundations’ Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency Committee for Black Directors.
“I'm thrilled and delighted to be the new Artistic Director of The Acting Company, building on the legacy of my distinguished predecessors,” says Gash. “The Acting Company has been and will always be America's dynamic new and classic theatre, where then meets now!”
“Kent is the perfect artistic director for The Acting Company now. He will expand on the company’s founding mission, the work we have been doing recently, and redefine how the classics speak to our time,” added Co-Founder Margot Harley.
The Acting Company’s 2022–2023 touring and New York season will begin with Kirsten Childs' world-premiere adaptation of Alexandré Dumas’ The Three Musketeers under the direction of Gash. The troupe will also perform Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in repertory, directed by Leah C. Gardiner.
The Acting Company, which develops actors by touring professional theatre across America, was founded in 1972 by John Houseman and Harley with the first graduating class of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. TAC was awarded the 2003 Tony Award for Excellence in the Theatre.
