Huntington Theatre names artistic director
Peter DuBois, a resident director and former associate producer at New York's acclaimed Public Theater, will be the new artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company starting in July.
At 37, he will be the youngest artistic director the Huntington has appointed.
Before joining the Public in 2003, DuBois was artistic director of Alaska's Perseverance Theatre for five years.
At the Public, he oversaw transfers of shows to Broadway, international artistic exchanges (notably with Dublin's Abbey Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre in London), and coproductions with high-profile groups such as LAByrinth Theater Company and Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
Behind the scenes, DuBois served as artistic liaison to the Public's patrons, corporate funders, and individual supporters. As a director, his duties included the 2007 staging of "Jack Goes Boating," starring Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. "The entire production . . . has an unforced naturalness that keeps schtick at bay,"
DuBois briefly outlined his plans during a telephone interview yesterday during a break for rehearsals of David Grimm's "The Miracle at Naples," which opens Saturday.
At the Huntington, which is Boston's professional theatre company in residence at Boston University, DuBois said he hoped to inventively reimagine the classics, to break ground in musical theater, and to nurture a generation of emerging artists, while at the same time focus on the needs of Boston's institutions and local community.
"I have a strong desire to get as many as people to the table as possible, " he said.
"We are definitely in an era where an artistic leader is not only about one's artistic prowess, but it also means your ability to create an entire vision for the whole organization."
Other finalists for the Huntington post were stage directors Ethan McSweeny and Mark Brokaw, and McCarter Theatre Center producing director Mara Isaacs.
DuBois will succeed Nicholas Martin, 67, who will become artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival in June.
Search committee members said they were impressed by DuBois's youth and artistic talent, which went hand-in-hand with a willingness to do the hard work of institution-building in a difficult climate for arts. 