Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Loretta Greco, whom Bay Area audiences know mainly from her work with American Conservatory Theater, has been named as the new artistic director of the Magic Theatre. She replaces Chris Smith.

“I am thrilled to have this opportunity to partner with David Jobin in launching the next era of adventuresome work at Magic Theatre,” Greco said in a statement. “I believe Magic’s 41-year legacy of unwavering commitment to playwrights and the development of bold new work is truly paramount to the future of American theater. I can’t wait to bring my passion for new work to a city I adore and to join San Francisco’s rich and wonderful community of artists.”

Greco arrives at the Magic with a directing career regionally and in New York, as well as producing experience as the producing artistic director of Women’s Project in NYC and as associate director and staff producer of McCarter Theatre.

Greco has director’s credits in the Bay Area as well, including the world premiere of Morbidity & Mortality at the Magic and Speed-the-Plow, Blackbird, and Lackawanna Blues at ACT.

Her New York premieres include: The Story, Lackawanna Blues, Two Sisters and a Piano (Public Theater); Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen, Touch, Gum (Women’s Project); Meshugah (Naked Angels); Mercy (Vineyard Theatre); A Park in Our House (New York Theater Workshop); and Under a Western Sky (INTAR/ Women’s Project). Regional credits include: Romeo and Juliet and Stop Kiss (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); and productions at Long Wharf, South Coast Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theater, Intiman, Williamstown Theater Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertory Theatre of St Louis, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Playmakers Repertory Company, and the Cleveland Play House. Greco also directed the national tour of Having Our Say as well as the play’s international premiere at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Greco has collaborated with a variety of distinguished contemporary writers including Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz, Tracey Scott Wilson, Emily Mann, Ruben Santiago Hudson, Deb Margolin, Luis Alfaro, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jessica Hagedorn. Greco’s own play, Passage: Stories of the Cuban Balseros premiered at Miami’s AREA Stage where it ran for six months before transferring to the Coconut Grove Playhouse.

“Loretta is the ideal choice to be leading the Magic at this time,” said Harold Goldstein and Missy Kirchner, co-presidents of Magic Theatre Board of Trustees. “Her experience and commitment to Magic Theatre’s mission was clear from the first day we met her. The Board and the staff are excited to be working with her to build on Magic’s foundation and legacy, most recently accomplished under Chris Smith’s leadership.”

“Loretta’s résumé and reputation speak volumes,” said Jobin, Magic Theatre’s managing director. “And personally, I am thrilled to have her on board.”

For more information, visit www.magictheatre.org.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has named six finalists in its annual playwriting competition, supported by generous funding from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, which recognizes plays that premiered outside New York City.

The top honoree in the Steinberg /ATCA New Play Awards will receive $25,000 — the largest prize for a national playwriting award. Two additional playwrights will receive $7,500 each.

The winners will be announced at a March 29, 2008 ceremony at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre in Louisville, Ky.

The six finalists:

The Crowd You’re in With, by Rebecca Gilman, debuted at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in November. The play examines three couples at a backyard barbecue who reveal vastly different attitudes toward having children in the 21st century.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone, by Sarah Ruhl, bowed at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in June. The quirky comedy examines the fallout when a lonely woman takes the cell phone from the body of dead man she discovers sitting next to her in a café and begins answering his calls.

End Days, by Deborah Zoe Laufer, premiered in October at Florida Stage in Manalapan. Sometimes comic, sometimes moving, the play studies the challenge of maintaining faith in a world dominated by science and fear. A Jewish family copes with the aftermath of 9/11 as the mother, now a born-again Christian, tries to convert the family before the rapture arrives — on Wednesday.

The English Channel, by Robert Brustein, debuted in September at Suffolk University and then the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha’s Vineyard. The noted critic and founder of the American Repertory Theatre penned a droll comedy centering on creativity, inspiration and plagiarism, in which the young Shakespeare, the ghost of Marlowe and the Dark Lady of the Sonnets collide in a tavern.

Strike-Slip, by Naomi Iizuka, opened last spring at the Humana Festival. The playwright presents a cinematic look at the interconnected nature of seemingly disconnected lives in the diverse, multi-cultural Los Angeles basin. One judge praised it as a 21st Century O. Henry story.

33 Variations, by Moises Kaufman, debuted in September at Washington’s Arena Stage. Kaufman offers a fictional imagining of Beethoven’s creation of 33 brilliant variations on a prosaic waltz. His obsessive pursuit of perfection parallels a modern tale of a terminally-ill musicologist struggling with her own obsession to unearth the source of Beethoven’s.

These finalists were selected from 28 eligible scripts submitted by ATCA
members. As the competition requires, none had productions in New York City in
2007. They were evaluated by a committee of 12 theater critics from around the
U.S. headed by chairman Wm. F. Hirschman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and vice-chair George Hatza of the Reading Eagle.

“The amazing range of work — dramas, fantasies, musicals, farces, melodramas –
was uplifting confirmation that theater remains a vital and evolving art form
that can speak to every generation,” Hirschman said.

Since the inception of ATCA’s New Play Award in 1977, honorees have included
Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Jane Martin, Arthur Miller, Mac
Wellman, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Lee Blessing, Lynn Nottage, Horton
Foote and Craig Lucas. Last year’s winner was San Francisco’s own Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers.

The awards are supported by an annual grant of $40,000 from the Harold and Mimi
Steinberg Charitable Trust, created in 1986 by Harold Steinberg on behalf of
himself and his late wife. The primary mission of the Steinberg Charitable Trust
to support the American theater. The trust has provided grants totaling millions
of dollars to support new productions of American plays and educational programs
for those who may not ordinarily experience live theater.

Opened March 1, 2008, Magic Theatre

Edna O’Brien’s novel-turned-play lacks dramatic fire
two stars Page-to-stage misfire

In many ways, Edna O’Brien’s Tir na nOg (Land of Youth) feels like a Word for Word production gone wrong.

Word for Word is the tremendously successful group that turns works of fiction into works of theater without changing the original text. If O’Brien had gone the Word for Word route in turning her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), into a play, she probably would have had better luck.

As it is, Tir na nOg, which had its world premiere at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, feels like fiction that hasn’t found its way into the world of theater.

There’s some beautiful, funny writing, and the story itself, ultimately about a young woman’s liberation from the bonds of society, church and family, is interesting. But as a playwright, O’Brien, who is no stranger to the Magic stage (Triptych, Family Butchers)), working the Magic’s outgoing artistic director, Chris Smith, hasn’t found a way for the story to live and breathe as a play.

The first act, set in the mid-to-late 1950s, is simply dramatically inert. We meet O’Brien’s heroines: Baba Brennan (Summer Serafin), from one of the small towns better families, and Kate Brady (Allison Jean White), a smart but poor girl whose father gets abusive when he drinks, which is often.

Once O’Brien effectively gets rid of Kate’s parents and sends the girls to convent boarding school, nothing happens. The most exciting thing on stage is seeing what the giant armoire at the back of Annie Smart’s mostly bare set will open to reveal: candles in a church, a family’s china collection or a priest’s pulpit.

Director Smith attempts to weave music throughout the proceedings, with Deborah Black as a nameless woman (outfitted by costumer Cassandra Carpenter as a beggar woman), who wanders through singing. We occasionally get a fiddle or a guitar along with a group number, but the music isn’t nearly as effective or as evocative as it wants to be.

It would seem that O’Brien and Smith are attempting to create a play with music, much like director Richard Nelson did in his beautiful adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead. But the music here adds very little, especially at the end of Act 1, when a song about Dublin, the big bad city, is meant to be dramatic, when it’s really just confusing.

In Act 2, once Baba and Kate are in Dublin, things get a little more interesting, but Kate’s romance with an older married man, Mr. Gentleman (Robert Parsons) is bungled. And the ending, when the beggar woman becomes a guiding spirit and helps Kate come to terms with her past and move more confidently into her future is more believable — and more moving — in theory than in practice. The end feels like a literary device that would be far more effective on the page.

Though the play, which runs about two long hours, can’t overcome its episodic nature to achieve dramatic momentum, the performances are strong, especially those of the thoughtful, sensitive White as Kate and the vibrant, red-headed verve of Serafin as the spitfire Baba.

Like all of the supporting players, Anne Darragh essays many parts and is most effective as a German landlady who doesn’t appreciate the “cheeky” girls living in her house and flirting with her husband.

Matt Foyer makes much of a thankless part in Kate’s drunken father, and both Cat Thompson (as a sweet nun who takes a liking to Kate) and Michael Louis Wells (in all his parts but especially as Hickey, a small town working man) shine.

The conclusion of Tir na nOg feels like the end of a first chapter, not the end of a play. Indeed, the original novel turned out to be the first part of a trilogy. It might have been much more interesting to dramatize one of the other books and refer to the first one in flashback, because that’s what this play feels like.

Tir na nOg continues through March 23 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$45. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org.

Opened Jan. 19, 2007, Magic Theatre

Knights, princesses, justice battle in Magic’s bold Territories
three 1/2 stars (Riveting, re-imagined history)

History is full of incredible, intelligent, brave women who helped change the course of the world. Trouble is, because they were women living in unenlightened times or places, their names have been lost to us.

That is the basic inspiration for Betty Shamieh’s Territories, which had its world premiere last weekend at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. This is Shamieh’s return to the Magic after the success of her drama The Black Eyed in 2005. From that production, Shamieh reunites with director Jessica Heidt and actor Nora el Samahy.

El Samahy plays Alia, a Muslim princess and sister to the Sultan, Saladin (Alfredo Narciso), the “famous Kurdish cur.” She is captured by the French knight Reginald de Chatillon (Rod Gnapp), a 12th-century Crusader bent on terrorizing the Middle East and helping his king (and the Pope) bring Jerusalem into the Christian fold.

While the basic facts of Shamieh’s play are backed up by history — the Christians were defeated by Saladin’s armies, and their loss led to the formation of the Third Crusade — the playwright exercises her creative muscle to delve behind the facts and surmise just how Saladin and Reginald came to blows.

Shamieh’s interesting take on the story gives us a crafty woman — Alia — for whom life has not been easy. Though born into royalty and beauty, Alia is considered a cripple because she suffers from debilitating seizures. Her chances of marriage are slim, and even her brother, who adores her, tells her bluntly: “You will not be loved.”

But Alia will be loved, and she will do everything in her power to protect her people and her country. She hatches a plan and sees it through, as she makes a dangerous pilgrimage to Mecca and, just as she guessed she would, is taken prisoner by Reginald.

Director Heidt’s incisive production is simple but effective. Melpomene Katakalos’ set, lit in golden tones by Ray Oppenheimer, is one of burnished Arabian grandeur. One side of the stage is Saladin’s palace, the other is Reginald’s dungeon, complete with instruments of torture. Behind the sheer curtain is percussionist Brandi Brandes punctuating the drama with an effective percussive score (sound design by Will McCandless).

When we first meet Alia, only her eyes are visible through her burka, but as the story unfolds, we see her in her flowing princess finery (gorgeous costumes by Fumiko Bielefeldt). Her softness and beauty contrasts greatly with Reginald’s chain-metal armor and his sadistic zeal when it comes to torturing his prisoners.

But the fierce Alia is different from any of Reginald’s other prisoners, and Shamieh handles their unusual love story — beautifully acted by el Samahy and Gnapp — with intelligence.

Though only about 70 minutes long, Territories feels substantial and relevant. Shamieh writes in a contemporary vernacular and finds ways to infuse humor into the sometimes tense action. When Reginald makes a grand pronouncement to Alia, she shoots back, “I came here a crippled virgin. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Heidt also lends the production a graceful touch with some nicely choreographed (by Monique Jenkinson) and highly stylized battle scenes. The choreography also comes into play when Alia has a seizure, and the world around her dances.

Whether it would really have been possible for the sister of the Sultan to inspire a clash between the Crusaders and the Muslims, who can say for sure? But Shamieh, in amending the book of history, asserts that women did all kinds of extraordinary things we can never know about because, in history’s eyes, they were nameless and faceless.

Territories gives us the name, face and bold deeds of one woman, and we leave the theater reminded that history rarely tells the whole story. It’s up to art to help fill in the blanks.

Territories continues through Feb, 10 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Shows are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $20 to $45. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org for information.

I’ve already offered up my Top 10 list of 2007’s best Bay Area theater (see it here).

That’s all well and good, but there was way too much good stuff in 2007 to contain in a polite numbered list. What follows, in no apparent order, are some of the year’s most distinctive theater moments (mostly good, some not so much).

The shows in the Top 10 were really great shows, but so were these. This is my honorable mention roster:

– American Suicide, Encore Theatre Company and Z Plays
– Pillowman, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
– The Birthday Party, Aurora Theatre Company
– Pleasure & Pain, Magic Theatre’s Hot House ‘07
– After the War, American Conservatory Theater
– Heartbreak House, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
– Tings Dey Happen, Dan Hoyle and The Marsh
– Annie Get Your Gun, Broadway by the Bay
– Des Moines, Campo Santo, Intersection for the Arts
– Richard III, California Shakespeare Theater

Favorite scene: Didn’t even have to think twice about this one. The dinner scene in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s adaptation of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Director Les Waters, working from Adele Edling Shank’s script, fashioned a multilayered scene that would have made Woolf herself proud. A boisterous family dinner, warmly illuminated by candles, allows us into the head of each of the diners without ever losing track of the dinner conversation. Extraordinary and beautiful — and vocally choreographed like a piece of complex music.

Greatest guilty pleasure: Legally Blonde, The Musical, had its pre-Broadway run early in 2007 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre, and though it had its problems, it was a heck of a lot of fun. The best number was the lengthy “What You Want” in which sorority gal Elle Woods (Laura Bell Bundy) decides to apply to Harvard. In true musical fashion, the number sweeps through time and space, coursing through months of effort and from Southern California to the hallowed halls of Harvard. Jerry Mitchell’s choreography incorporates a frat party, the Harvard selection committee and a marching band.

Favorite image:The green girl in Berkeley Rep’s The Pillowman.

Favorite couple: Francis Jue as Mr. Oji and Delia MacDougall as Olga Mikhoels in Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War at ACT. The sweetest romance was also the most surprising: a shy Japanese man and a recent Russian immigrant, neither of whom speaks much English.

Speaking of MacDougall: It was a good year for the actress (seen at right with the fur and tiara), who died memorably in Cal Shakes’ King Lear and ended 2007 with a superb, hip-swiveling, lip-pursing performance in Sex by Mae West at the Aurora.

Favorite tryout: Joan Rivers is more than a red carpet personality and an experiment in plastic surgery. An avowed theater lover, Rivers got down to some serious (and seriously funny) business in The Joan Rivers Theatre Project at the Magic. She combined stand-up with drama as she told an autobiographical tale of growing old in show business. The play was far from perfect, but she gets an A for effort.

Best ensemble: Behind every good show is a good ensemble, in front of and behind the scenes. But the one that comes to mind that, together, elevated the play was the fine crew in TheatreWorks’ Theophilus North (left) directed by Leslie Martinson.

Biggest disappointments: There were a few of them. I adore Kiki and Herb (Justin Bond and Kenny Melman), but their summer gig at ACT was in desperate need of a director. Berkeley Rep hosted Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Oliver Twist, and while it was good, it didn’t reach anything approaching the heights of David Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby. I complained about this in the review, and I’ll complain about it again: In ACT’s The Rainmaker, when the rain falls at the end, the actors should get wet. That’s the whole point of the play. In this version, the rain fell from above, but the actors were behind it and only pretended — acted if you will — the wetness. Lame.

Most gratuitous nudity: Actors bare all emotionally _ it’s what they do. But this year saw some unnecessary flesh, most notably in ‘Bot at the Magic, Private Jokes, Public Places at the Aurora and Two Boys in Bed on a Cold Winter Night. Costumes are a good thing.

Favorite quote of the year: It was uttered by the food critic Anton Ego (and written by Brad Bird) in the brilliant Pixar/Disney movie Ratatouille. As a critic (or what’s left of one), the words really hit home. And they’re true.

Here’s a taste: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”

Happy New Year. May your stages in 2008 be full of the discovery of the new.

I can always tell whether a theater year has been good or not so good when I sit down to hammer out my Top 10 list. If I can summon five or more shows simply from memory, it’s a good year. This year’s entire list came almost entirely from memory (which is a feat in itself as the old noggin’ ain’t what it used to be), so it was a good year indeed.

Here’s the countdown leading to my No. 1 pick of the year.

10. Anna Bella Eema, Crowded Fire Theatre Company — Three fantastic actresses, Cassie Beck, Danielle Levin and Julie Kurtz, brought Lisa D’Amour’s tone poem of a play to thrilling life.

9. First Person Shooter, SF Playhouse and Playground – What a good year for SF Playhouse. This original play by local writer Aaron Loeb brought some powerhouse drama to its examination of violent video games and school violence.

8. Bulrusher, Shotgun Players – Berkeley’s own Eisa Davis’ eloquent play, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, turned the Northern California dialect of Boontling into poetic drama as it told the story of an outcast young woman finding her place in the world.

7. Avenue Q, Best of Broadway/SHN – Hilarious and irreverent, this puppet-filled musical by Jeff Marx, Robert Lopez and Jeff Whitty made you believe in friendship, life after college and the joys of puppet sex.

6. Jesus Hopped the `A’ Train, SF Playhouse – It took a while for Stephen Adly Guirgis’ intense drama to make it to the Bay Area, but the wait was worth it, if only for Berkeley resident Carl Lumbly in the central role of a murderer who may have seen the error of his ways. And note: This is the second SF Playhouse show on the list.

5. Emma, TheatreWorks _ Paul Gordon’s sumptuous, funny and, of course, romantic adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel came marvelously to life as a musical, with a star-making performance by Pleasanton native Lianne Marie Dobbs.

4. Argonautika, Berkeley Repertory Theatre _ Mary Zimmerman’s athletic retelling of the Jason and the Argonauts myth fused beauty and muscle and impeccable storytelling into a grand evening of theater.

3. Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People, Word for Word – Actually, the second half of Strangers We Know, this stage adaptation of Lorrie Moore’s short story was brilliantly directed by Joel Mullenix and performed by Patricia Silver and Sheila Balter.

2. Man and Superman, California Shakespeare Theater _ This unbelievably vivid version of George Bernard Shaw’s massive existentialist comedy benefited from superior direction by Jonathan Moscone and an impeccable cast headed by Elijah Alexander and Susannah Livingston.

1. The Crowd You’re in With, Magic Theatre _ The team of playwright Rebecca Gilman and director Amy Glazer fused into brilliance with this slice-of-life meditation on why we make the choices we make in our lives. Local luminaries Lorri Holt and Charles Shaw Robinson brought incredible humor and tenderness to their roles, and T. Edward Webster in the lead managed to make ambivalence compelling.

Now it’s your turn. Please post your favorite theater moments of 2007 — no geographical limitations, just good theater.

Opened Nov. 17, 2007 at the Magic Theatre

Gilman’s Crowd stands out
Four stars Pleasingly provocative

There aren’t many plays, especially new plays, that stick with you days after seeing them.

Rebecca Gilman’s The Crowd You’re in With, which had its world premiere last weekend at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, is, in many ways, an astonishing play.

It seems so simple and so casual at first. A Chicago couple, Jasper (T. Edward Webster) and his wife, Melinda (Makela Speilman) are hosting a Fourth of July barbecue in the backyard of their building.

Their friends — another married couple, Dan (Kevin Rolston) and Windsong (Allison Jean White), and a single dude, Dwight (Chris Yule) — are coming, as are their older, upstairs neighbors, Karen (Lorri Holt) and Tom (Charles Shaw Robinson), who also happen to be their landlords.

The set, by Erik Flatmo, is your basic backyard: backdoor, stairs, grass, table, chairs, barbecue, etc. The play Proof could take place on this set. It looks real, and that’s key: Gilman is giving us a slice of life, and the more realistic the better.

Jasper and Melinda have been trying for a few months to get pregnant with no luck. Windsong, on the other hand, is in the late stages of her first pregnancy. The child status of the couples is important, because when Tom and Karen arrive (and while Karen makes what appears to be a delicious, fruity sangria with blueberries), we learn that this older couple, both of whom came together after unsuccessful first marriages, decided not to have children.

When the younger couples balk at their choice and imply that their decision is a selfish one, Karen’s calm defense belies the fact that she’s had to go down this road more than a few times. “It’s not like we’re bad people because we don’t want to procreate,’’ she says.

The tone of the cheerful barbecue quickly changes to one of unease and discomfort, especially when the older couple dons the landlord mantle and basically says to Jasper and Melinda that if they have a baby, they have to find another place to live.

The arrival of Dwight (Yule, above) — complete with cheap beer and a slacker attitude — lightens the mood somewhat. His showpiece is a monologue about what it’s like to be a waiter in a fairly nice restaurant when families with young children come in. It’s a great moment, and the mere mention of the word “Cheerios’’ brings a knowing chuckle from the audience.

When the barbecue breaks up, Gilman, paired up for the fourth time with director Amy Glazer, doing some of her best, most detailed work here, gets down to the meat of her drama. Jasper has been well and truly thrown by the afternoon’s events, and as night falls (Kurt Landisman’s transitioning, dusky lighting is gorgeous), he finds himself pondering all of his life’s choices.

Jasper is a bright, somewhat quiet man, and he admits that the idea of living an unexamined life is repellent to him. So he begins examining. Why are Dan, Dwight and Windsong — intelligent enough people but not really astute — his friends? Does he really want to have a child with Melinda? Does he even love her?

The older couple, having left the party when they sensed that their childlessness (“And our bad personalities,’’ as Karen puts it) were ruining the party, return to apologize, and the play deepens into something completely captivating and heartfelt.

Holt (above, with Webster) and Robinson, two veteran local actors, are incredibly good at maneuvering their prickly characters and imbuing them with warmth and intelligence. And Webster rises to their level.

In fact, all of the performances under Glazer’s direction are superb, and the play’s brief 75 minutes fly by but never feel rushed.

In some of her previous plays, Gilman has been sort of a finger-wagger, stirring up issues and hectoring her audience. With The Crowd You’re in With, she gives her audience a jolt, but it’s more like she wants to knock us out of our big, fat American apathy and think — really think — about the choices we make in our lives and why we make them.

The Crowd You’re in With continues through Dec. 9 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org for information.

After five seasons at the helm of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, artistic director Chris Smith will leave his position at the end of the 2007-2008 season.

A search commtittee will begin a national search for his replacement effective immediately.

“As I contemplate my fifth season at the Magic, I believe we have accomplished so much that I had hoped for when I came on board,” Smith said in a statement. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done on stage and behind the scenes…As my family and I consider the next step in my career, I know the magic is in a great position for this transition. I will be leaving on an artistic and organizational high note.”

Since Smith’s arrival in the 2003-2004 season, the Magic has grown artistically and financially with 20 world premieres, four American premieres and three Bay Area premieres by the likes of David Mamet, Rebecca Gilman, Edna O’Brien, Paula Vogel, Charles Grodin and the Tony Award-winning team of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik.

In four seasons, subscriptions have increased by 50 percent, and single-ticket income hit all-time highs with Mamet’s Dr. Faustus, O’Brien’s Triptych, the musical adaptation of The Opposite of Sex and Elaine May’s Moving Right Along.

For information about the Magic, visit www.magictheatre.org.