Virginia Stage Company Announces New Producing Artistic Director

After a national search, Virginia Stage Company is excited to announce the appointment of Tom Quaintance to the position of Producing Artistic Director. Quaintance will work with the Virginia Stage board and staff over the next few months and begin in full on December 1, 2016. Previously, Quaintance served as the Artistic Director of Cape Fear Regional Theatre, an Associate Artist with PlayMakers Repertory Company and Open Fist Theatre Company, and was the Founder and Artistic Director of FreightTrain Shakespeare in Los Angeles.

Upon Quaintance's arrival, Virginia Stage Company will transition to a single-leader model, with the Producing Artistic Director overseeing both financial and artistic operations. With degrees in economics and theatre, a master's degree in directing, and a long track record of both financial and artistic success, Quaintance fits the bill perfectly.

"We are thrilled to welcome Tom to our Hampton Roads arts community," Dr. SaraH Clarkson, President of Virginia Stage Company's Board of Directors, said. "He is a proven artistic leader, and I know that he will expand the legacy of Virginia Stage Company. We also welcome his wife Wallis, who is an actress and educator, and their two daughters."

Among his major accomplishments, Quaintance has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for groundbreaking new productions and community engagement efforts. Last March, Quaintance directed the world premiere of Downrange: Voices from the Homefront, a play based on interviews with military spouses on the impact of deployment in a post 9/11 world. The play and engagement efforts around it gained national acclaim.

"The most important work I can do as an artistic leader is to grapple with the issues that matter, so that the theatre becomes a place that nourishes the conversations we need to have to grow as a community," Quaintance said. "Downrange was an extraordinary experience and confirmed to me that audiences are hungry for theatre that matters."

Downrange is representative of Quaintance's tenure at Cape Fear Regional Theatre (CFRT), where the programming focused on deep engagement of the military-centered, racially diverse community of Fayetteville. Other productions coming out of the theatre's Community Engagement Initiative include The Piano Lesson, The Parchman Hour: Songs and Stories of the '61 Freedom Riders, and The Bluest Eye. He has directed shows regionally across the United States including: Nicholas Nickleby, An Enemy of the People, Shipwrecked, and The Little Prince at PlayMakers Repertory Company, The Devil in Drag with The Open Fist Company, and numerous shows at CFRT, including Amadeus (in co-production with the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra), Sweeney Todd, and Pride and Prejudice.

When asked what drew him to Virginia Stage, Quaintance said, "It was a combination of two things, the community and the theatre: the diversity of Hampton Roads, and Norfolk specifically, and the potential of Virginia Stage Company and the Wells Theatre to make an impact."

"We don't question why people go to a concert," said Quaintance about the staying power of theatre. "It's a different experience than listening to music at home on an iPhone. The same thing is true about theatre if you are doing something that is important, exciting, and engages the emotional connection with an audience. I think the radical act of disconnecting from the outside and connecting with the group of people you are physically with, both on stage and in the audience, is extraordinarily powerful."

Virginia Stage Company's season kicked off on September 13 with I Sing the Rising Sea in collaboration with ODURep at the Goode Theatre on ODU's campus and will return home to The Wells Theatre in December for A Christmas Carol.

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