Kent Gash Appointed as new Artistic Director at The Acting Company

The Acting Company has announced the appointment of Kent Gash as its new Artistic Director. Gash joins The Acting Company following a distinguished 20-plus-year career as an award winning director, actor, educator and author.

Gash is an Arts Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is the Founding Director of the Tisch School of the Arts' New Studio on Broadway. He now joins a distinguished list of impressive talents, including John Houseman, Alan Schneider, Michael Kahn, Gerry Gutierrez, Zelda Fichandler, Ian Belknap and Margot Harley to have served as Artistic Director of The Acting Company, founded in 1972 and oft-considered the leading touring repertory theater in the country.

"I'm thrilled and delighted to be the new Artistic Director of The Acting Company, building on the legacy of my distinguished predecessors," says Gash. "The Acting Company has been and will always be, AMERICA'S DYNAMIC NEW AND CLASSIC THEATRE, WHERE THEN MEETS NOW!"

Gash brings to The Acting Company an extensive career as a stage director including productions by living dramatists Quiara Alegría Hudes, Robert O'Hara, Dominique Morisseau, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Regina Taylor, George C. Wolfe, among many others; and has directed important revivals of the plays or musicals of Noël Coward, Duke Ellington, Frank Loesser, Stephen Sondheim, William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson. Gash's productions have been seen at most of the leading U.S. theaters including The Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the forthcoming production of Choir Boyat Steppenwolf Theater in the summer of 2022.

"Kent is the perfect artistic director for The Acting Company now. He will expand on the company's founding mission, the work we have been doing recently, and redefine how the classics speak to our time,"said Margot Harley.

Previously, Gash was an Associate Artistic Director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, recipient of the 2007 Tony Award for American Regional Theatre. He also served on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. Gash currently serves on the Arts Advisory Board of the Princess Grace Foundation and he also serves on the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundations' Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency Committee for Black Directors.

"Over the past 30 years I have been lucky enough to work with Kent in many capacities. I watched him evolve from a vibrant young actor, to a thrilling director, to the great artistic leader he is today,says Oskar Eustis."The Acting Company have made an inspired choice, and I can't wait to see what Kent will create with them."

Gash is a graduate of the Carnegie-Mellon University School of Drama with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Theatre, Film and Television with a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Directing for the Theatre and Television.

The Acting Company's 2022-23 touring and New York season will begin with a world premiere adaptation of Alexandré Dumas' The Three Musketeersby Kirsten Childsunder the direction of Gash. The troupe will also perform William Shakespeare's Romeo & Julietin repertory, directed by Leah C.Gardiner.

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