TheatreWorks Announces Associate Artistic Director Leslie Martinson

TheatreWorks, the nationally acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, has announced the appointment of Leslie Martinson, previously Casting Director/Associate Artist and director of many hit TheatreWorks Productions, to the position of Associate Artistic DirectoR. Martinson has served as a director and administrator at TheatreWorks since 1984. "This is a great, well-deserved step for Leslie and an important one for TheatreWorks," said Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley. "She has been vital to our artistic success for over 25 years and is highly respected as a director and casting director throughout the theatre community. As Associate Artistic Director she will be both a highly valued artist and an outstanding advocate for the company and its mission."

Martinson is slated to direct next season's California Premiere of Warrior Class, a searing political drama from playwright Kenneth Lin that received immediate acclaim when it made its Off-Broadway debut last year. A graduate of Occidental College, she was a Watson Fellow, a member of Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, a member of the LaMaMa International Directing Symposium, and has served on Theatre Bay Area's Theatre Services Committee since 2002. In 2009, she was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship in Stage Direction from the Arts Council of Silicon Valley for artistic achievement and community impact. She leads master classes, workshops, and panels for many Bay Area universities, academies, and theatre companies.

As a director at TheatreWorks, Martinson's most recent credits include this season's Regional Premiere of Time Stands Still, last season's West Coast Premiere of The Pitmen Painters, and the company's acclaimed 2010 production of Superior Donuts. Her other TheatreWorks directing credits include The Grapes of Wrath (co-directed with Artistic Director Robert Kelley), the Bay Area Premiere of Putting it Together, and the West Coast Premieres of The Boys Next Door, Brilliant Traces, If We Are Women, Theophilus North, and The Voice of the Prairie, among others.

TheatreWorks is an Equity/LORT theatre, producing eight shows annually with a $8 million budget, employing 36 staff, 27-member board, 300+ volunteers, and 200+ professional actors, directors, and designers each season, playing to more than 100,000 patrons. TheatreWorks has captured a national reputation for artistic innovation and integrity, often presenting Bay Area theatre-goers with their first look at acclaimed musicals, comedies, and dramas, directed by award-winning local and guest directors, and performed by professional actors cast locally and from across the country. Community and educational outreach programs include TheatreWorks for Schools (reaching 24,000 youngsters annually with in-class workshops and underwritten matinees), the lauded Young Playwrights Initiative (forging artistic links within the community), the TELL Project (Theatre for English Language Learners) and Oskar Project, an award-winning trilogy of in-school plays that deal with issues confronting today's youth including bullying and stress.

Since its founding in 1970, under the continuing artistic direction of founder Robert Kelley, the company has become one of the nation's leaders in cultivating and producing new musicals, particularly through its New Works Initiative and Writer's Retreat, two funded programs which attract composers and lyricists of national stature (Marsha Norman, Henry Krieger, Stephen Schwartz, Bob Weir, Taj Mahal, and many others.). The company has presented 63 world premieres, and more than 120 regional premieres, and developed scores of other works which have gone on to productions both Off-Broadway and regionally. It was at TheatreWorks that Memphis, the 2010 Tony Award-winning musical that played on Broadway for three years before embarking on its current national tour, was first workshopped and received its World Premiere.

TheatreWorks continues its 43rd season with its current World Premiere of the musical Being Earnest, by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska. The season closes with the West Coast Premiere of Colman Domingo's raucous comedy Wild with Happy June 5-30, 2013. The 2013 - 2014 season launches in July with the World Premiere of sizzling romantic comedy The Loudest Man on Earth, also developed at TheatreWorks,starring Deaf actor Adrian Blue, followed by the Regional Premiere of gripping Pulitzer Prize finalist Other Desert Cities by acclaimed playwright Jon Robin Baitz, then the California Premiere of Kenneth Lin's searing political drama Warrior Class. For the holidays, the company presents the exuberant Broadway musical adaptation of Little Women, based on the beloved novel by Louisa May Alcott. The season continues in 2014 with the January Regional Premiere of Silent Sky from local playwright Lauren Gunderson, and the heartwarming award-winning musical Once on this Island in March. Rounding out the season is the Regional Premiere of raucous physical comedyHound of the Baskervilles, an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated mystery featuring three actors in over 20 roles, followed by Stephen Sondheim's intimate musical Marry Me a Little, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, conceived and developed by Craig Lucas and Norman Rene.

For information visit www.TheatreWorks.org.

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