Lark Announces Staff Changes

The Lark Play Development Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Vanessa Rose as the new Director of Development, and the promotion of long time staff member Anna Kull to the position of Director of Community Relationships. Both of these positions were created to help Lark to meet the growing demands for the services the 19-year old company provides as a laboratory for new theatrical work. Over the past five years, Lark's budget and staff have doubled in size and our community of artists and partners has increased substantially. The expertise that Rose and Kull bring to their new positions will support Lark's short and long-term strategic objectives focused on meeting these increased needs.

Rose assumes Lark's first-ever senior fundraising staff position, and will work closely with artistic directorJohn Clinton Eisner and managing director Michael Robertson to double revenues over the next five years in order to provide financial stability to the organization. In her new position, Kull will focus on communication strategies that allow the Lark to reach out to its expanding network of artists, producers, community groups, and audience members looking strategically at how these groups intersecT. Robertson says of the staff change, "In the next few years, we seek to substantially raise artist fees, stabilize staff salaries, create a cash reserve that will allow us to weather economic downturns, and provide opportunity funds to artists to experiment, research, and incentivize productions of their plays. Additionally, we seek to deepen the engagement of an ever-growing Lark community through communications and technology upgrades. Vanessa and Anna are crucial leaders in investing in the community that will help make this happen. We are thrilled to have them on the team."

Before Rose joined the staff in January, she was the first Managing Director of The Knights, a New York-based orchestra, for which she developed a Board of Directors and created a fundraising program. She has also served as Associate Director of Patron Programs and Membership at the Metropolitan Opera, cultivating and soliciting hundreds of donors. In 2006, she completed the League of American Orchestra's prestigious Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, which included residencies with the Dallas Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Aspen Music Festival and School and San Francisco Symphony. Vanessa is an active freelance violinist and has performed with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Harrisburg Symphony and Spoleto Festivals. She attended the Eastman School of Music, Mannes College of Music and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Kull joined the Lark in 2005 as Executive Assistant. As the Director of Community Relationships, she will oversee press and marketing, community engagement strategies and various volunteer programs. In her seven years at the Lark, Anna has worked closely with Lark's many constituencies as liaison to the Board of Trustees, organizer of Lark's Artistic Cabinet, member of the Literary Wing and coordinator of the Internship Program. Also an actor, she spent the 2008-09 season at Actors Theatre of Louisville and has appeared at many New York City theaters. Kull holds a BA in psychology and theatre from Vassar College. She is part of the 2012-2013 New York Foundation for the Arts Emerging Leaders Boot Camp and a member of Actors Equity.

Founded in 1994, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas, providing playwrights and their collaborators with resources to develop their work in a supportive yet rigorous environment and encouraging artists to define their own goals and creative processes in pursuit of a unique vision. We embrace new and diverse perspectives here at home and in all corners of the world, supporting innovative strategies to help new work reach audiences through a network of evolving partnerships. We strive to reinvigorate the theater's ancient and enduring role as a public forum for discussion, debate and community engagement, and to strengthen society's capacity to imagine its future through storytelling. For more information about the Lark Play Development Center, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.