Evan Cabnet, at present Inventive Director of Lincoln Heart Theater’s LCT3, will probably be Second Stage Theater’s new Inventive Director starting in September, Second Stage trustees introduced at present. Cabnet will formally launch his first season of programming in fall 2025.
Carole Rothman, Second Stage’s present inventive director who in 1979 based the famend New York theater firm that will finally produce such acclaimed tasks as Expensive Evan Hansen, Subsequent To Regular, This Is Our Youth and The twenty fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, introduced final September her plans to step down.
Rothman will proceed in her place by way of August 2024. Interim Inventive Director Bennett Leak will oversee the Firm’s upcoming forty sixth season.
“I feel the audiences and creatives who make up the communities of Broadway, Off Broadway, and American theater at giant have a lot to have fun in Evan’s appointment as the brand new chief of Second Stage,” mentioned Jacobs-Jenkins, whose play Applicable was produced at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater final fall and lately received the Tony Award for Finest Revival of a Play. “Carole Rothman has finished a legendary job increase Second Stage as an actual temple for the artwork of latest American playwriting and I can not think about a extra thrilling and worthy successor than Evan. I don’t know one other man – not to mention chief – as passionate, educated, moral, insightful and sort as Evan, particularly with regards to advocating for the theater – and the numerous completely different varieties of oldsters who make it.”
In a press release at present, Cabnet mentioned, “I’m excited and humbled to carry my ardour for growing, nurturing, and championing new work to Second Stage, certainly one of New York’s most significant and influential houses for modern theater. As my mentor Andre Bishop says, we live in a golden age of American playwriting, and Second Stage’s unbelievable historical past, and the house Carole Rothman has created for artists, sits firmly on the middle of this inspiring and culturally wealthy second.”
Cabnet added that he hopes “to honor her legacy as one of many really nice leaders of the American theater, and am trying ahead to serving to write the subsequent chapter for such a unprecedented group.”
Cabnet’s appointment was introduced by The Board of Trustees of Second Stage Theater.
“In taking over the seek for a brand new Inventive Director, our 13-member committee went into the method understanding one certainty. We’d by no means change Carole Rothman,” mentioned Kevin Brockman (Head of the Inventive Director Search Committee and Board Co-Chair) and Terry Lindsay (Board Co-Chair). “How will you change a founding inventive director who had spent 45 years constructing a powerhouse theatrical establishment? As a substitute, we targeted our efforts on figuring out probably the most proficient, forward-thinking, artistic thoughts who Is as obsessed with our mission and as devoted to championing new theatrical voices as we had been. We wished somebody to form and encourage our subsequent 45 years of progress and success. And thru a really exacting and arduous course of, the place we met and had in-depth discussions with dozens of potential candidates, our efforts shortly coalesced behind one individual…Evan Cabnet.”
“From the beginning, Evan stood out amongst his friends,” mentioned Brockman and Lindsay. “He has an unlimited information of and appreciation for American playwrights, and has spent his profession championing new voices, giving alternatives to those that may not in any other case have their works showcased. He is without doubt one of the smartest and most moral folks in our neighborhood, and is beloved and admired by everybody with whom he’s labored. Simply as vital is his dedication to and perception in an equitable, various and inclusive office, each in entrance of and behind the footlights. It’s merely a part of his DNA. Collaboration is vital with Evan, however he’s not shy about stating opinions and is comfy within the information that the buck in the end stops at his desk. We actually don’t know the way we bought this fortunate, however we’ll definitely take it. Evan is the way forward for Second Stage, and we are able to’t wait to see the place he leads us.”
Cabnet is a theater director and author, and since 2016, has served because the Inventive Director of LCT3, Lincoln Heart Theater’s residence for brand new artists and audiences. Throughout his tenure, LCT3 produced twenty productions, together with Antoinette Nwandu’s Move Over, which transferred to Broadway and had the excellence of being the primary play to open after the pandemic. Different productions that premiered underneath his management embrace Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Marys Seacole, and Aya Ogawa’s The Nosebleed, amongst others. Performs commissioned, developed, and produced underneath Cabnet’s management have gone on to be seen on phases by way of regional theaters, at universities, and in London.
For over twenty years, Cabnet has labored as a director on and off Broadway, regionally and internationally. He has collaborated with such writers as Jacobs-Jenkins, Stephen Sondheim and Donald Margulies, amongst others. He’s a former Inventive Affiliate on the Roundabout Theatre Firm, a founding member of the Ars Nova Writers Group, and a former Resident Artist with Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater.
