The Playwrights Realm Reveals Chris Berry as Organization's New Executive Director

The Playwrights Realm has announced that Chris Berry will join its leadership team as the company’s new Executive Director. An accomplished administrator, educator, and director who most recently served as Arts Director at Penumbra Center for Racial Healing, Berry brings to the artist-centric organization a dynamic wealth of experience and a keen understanding of both sides of artist/arts institutional collaboration.

Berry steps into the position following a nationwide search for a qualified successor to Roberta Pereira, who left the role in 2023 after 8 years of transformative leadership. Pereira set countless precedents for how the organization could be responsive to the conditions of theater artists, both in times of crisis (the pandemic shutdown and the ensuing and ongoing financial turmoil in the field) and growth. She most recently implemented initiatives including the Radical Parent Inclusion Project (RPI), the International Theatermakers Award (ITA), and A Ticket For Every Budget — and, during COVID, stewarded the organization’s temporary transition into a full-time playwrights service organization.

Berry brings to The Realm the multi-lensed perspective of someone active in various facets of the theatrical landscape, both as a professional artist and administrator—making him uniquely attuned to how institutions can holistically support artists. Responding to the inequities in American theatre by centering writing by artists of color and “striving to tell stories that often go untold” throughout his career, Berry joined Penumbra in a moment of transformation towards becoming a Center for Racial Healing. His contributions to building a more equitable industry make him the ideal candidate to continue, and further, The Realm’s work of taking down barriers to entry to the American theater and innovating ways to support artists in a rapidly shifting and vulnerable sphere. 

Among many other duties in his Arts Director role at Penumbra, Berry developed creative audience engagement plans and worked with the President and COO on the organization’s annual budget; supported the development and production of new work; and produced and directed the acclaimed world premiere production of Nambi E. Kelley’s Re-Memori. In his work as Vice President and conference planner for Black Theatre Network, he cultivated numerous panels for their 2020 virtual convening, Black Theatre Week. Berry worked as Director of Education and Humanities at The Billie Holiday Theatre and Program Director for the Black Arts Institute, and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 

Said Berry, “Through my work in other organizations, I’ve encountered many artists with relationships to The Realm: I could always see their body language change and eyes light up when they talked about their experiences with this company. When I began interviewing, I was blown away to meet such a galvanized group of people committed to an organizational mission. What’s so exciting about this role is The Realm’s vocation to put real bones into its dreams, both for the industry and for artists. Especially in this moment of crisis in funding for theater, organizations must ask themselves how to continue living in their values—how to, despite the hardship, create a more inclusive, less oppressive industry and world. I’m exhilarated by the process of audacious dreaming and the challenge of finding creative, concrete approaches to giving artists the resources they need to imagine the next chapter of the American theater.”

The Playwrights Realm Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner said, “Chris has a people-centric, value-forward way of looking at the world that is very aligned with The Realm’s way of working. It’s not just me who is excited about Chris; we involved a lot of folks in our interview process, including our board, staff, and playwrights — and we were all so inspired by the way equity, empathy, and authenticity drove him through the entire process. Most important is the high regard and fondness with which playwrights speak of him. This makes him a natural fit to lead The Playwrights Realm. With his track record of putting people first, thinking outside the normal theater paradigms, and a record of work in racial equity practices, I’m thrilled to see where we can take The Realm together.” 

To post a comment, you must register and login.