Laura Kepley Steps Down as Artistic Director of Cleveland Playhouse

Laura Kepley has stepped down as Artistic Director of Cleveland Playhouse, American Theatre reports. A search for an interim artistic director is already underway.

Laura Kepley became Artistic Director of Cleveland Play House in 2013 and has directed numerous CPH mainstage productions including Every Brilliant Thing; Into the Breeches!; Tiny Houses (world premiere); Sweat; The Diary of Anne Frank; Shakespeare in Love; The Crucible; Steel Magnolias; The Good Peaches (world premiere); Fairfield (world premiere); How I Learned to Drive (also at Syracuse Stage); The Little Foxes; Venus in Fur; Good People (also at Syracuse Stage); A Carol for Cleveland (world premiere); In the Next Room, or the vibrator play; My Name is Asher Lev and CPH readings of Roe Green Award-winning plays Tiny Houses; The Chinese Lady; Soups, Stews and Casseroles: 1976; Marjorie Prime and Daphne's Dive.

She joined CPH in 2010, having arrived from Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island where she was Resident Director and Artistic Associate for four seasons and Interim Director of the Brown/Trinity Rep M.F.A. in Directing Program for one. She has also directed for The Alliance Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Chautauqua Theater Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, among others.

A native Ohioan, Laura received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her Master of Fine Arts from Brown University/Trinity Rep. She is a Drama League Fellow, a recipient of the 2009-2011 National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Program for Directors, and a member of Leadership Cleveland's Class of 2021. Locally she has been recognized with multiple Outstanding Director commendations from The Cleveland Critics Circle, a Cuyahoga Community College/Smart Business "Smart Women" Award and a Crain's Cleveland "Woman of Note" designation.