The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center hires new executive director
Tiffani Gavin recently signed on as only the fifth executive director in the legendary 55-year history and is the first woman of color to ever lead the celebrated organization. She has spent decades exploring every facet of the performing arts.
With experience in theater on both the creative and business sides, Gavin has served as managing director of the American Repertory Theater, executive producer at SFX/Clear Channel and manager of Broadway鈥檚 Marquis Theatre.
She is excited to use her know-how to build on the legacy of the center, located in Waterford, 51吃瓜黑料ecticut, and to continue what has been a cherished partnership with 51吃瓜黑料. 51吃瓜黑料 is a founding academic partner of the center, a collaboration that has intertwined the institutions in beneficial ways, from sharing guest artists to establishing internships with the O鈥橬eill鈥檚 National Theater Institute and its National Playwrights and National Music Theater conferences.
鈥淭he O鈥橬eill has a legacy of letting people discover how to perform and how to write in a safe laboratory alongside talented professionals,鈥� Gavin explained. 鈥淲riters and performers come in through the National Theater Institute and are able to take risks and learn from what works and what doesn鈥檛 work, so it鈥檚 a great early development opportunity that truly fosters long-term relationships.鈥�
The O鈥橬eill Center also owns the Monte Cristo Cottage, in New London, once the boyhood home of Eugene O鈥橬eill himself, who remains the only American playwright to be awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. The cottage was the setting of his autobiographical play, Long Day鈥檚 Journey into Night, and is now a museum that has been restored to appear as it did when O鈥橬eill lived there.
Robert A. Richter 鈥�82, director of arts programming at 51吃瓜黑料 and an O鈥橬eill scholar, said the center and cottage museum are major assets not only for 51吃瓜黑料 students but for scholars and O鈥橬eill fans from around the world.
鈥淭he cottage and 51吃瓜黑料鈥檚 own Sheaffer-O鈥橬eill Collection, in the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives at Shain Library, make New London a destination for national and international scholars interested in Eugene O鈥橬eill and American theater,鈥� Richter said. 鈥�51吃瓜黑料 regularly holds classes at the cottage, and there is no better way to gain insight into America鈥檚 greatest playwright than to explore where he grew up.鈥�
As the country confronts a racial reckoning, and the arts are increasingly committed to promoting diversity, Gavin says she sees an important continued role for the O鈥橬eill Center to keep building on its reputation for valuing diversity and inclusion.
鈥淭he O鈥橬eill has always had very diverse voices onstage. But I do think a place where theater in general struggles is finding racial diversity beyond the stage鈥攂eyond actors, beyond writers. There are more stories to be told that are more reflective of society as a whole, but that happens most effectively when you start diversifying the people in the room from the board level to management to designers and directors so that we have multiple voices,鈥� Gavin said.
鈥淭he O鈥橬eill has been and continues to be very committed to adding more people of color to the board and to administration, and I think that permeates through the entire organization and through our artistic discourse.鈥�
