Darko Tresnjak, artistic director of Hartford Stage since 2011, will step down from that position in June of 2019, the theater announced Thursday.
The news was not unexpected. Tresnjak’s most recent contact extension, in 2016, was to last through the end of the theater’s 2018-19 season.
Tresnjak, 52, was unavailable for comment Thursday night and his future plans were not announced. Hartford Stage issued a statement from him as part of a press release announcing his eventual departure:
“I want to thank our staff, our board, our audiences, and all the wonderful artists whose work has graced our stage over the past seven seasons,” Tresnjak’s statement reads. “And I look forward to our spectacular 2018-2019 season, which will be announced shortly. Serving as the artistic director of Hartford Stage has been the greatest honor and privilege of my career. I look forward to welcoming the next artistic director who – working alongside our indomitable managing director, Mike Stotts – will lead this great American theater company.”
Reached by phone at the theater Thursday night, Michael Stotts said that Tresnjak will “of course” be involved in the theater’s 2018-19 season, which is being announced this month.
Stotts will be staying on in his position as managing director. He was active in the search that brought Tresnjak to Hartford Stage and expects to be active in the search for Tresnjak’s successor. The search committee, Stotts says, will be overseen by the theater’s board of directors.
“It has been a terrific seven – and will be a terrific eight – years,” Stotts said. “I’m sorry to see Darko go. Hartford Stage is in a very good position thanks to the contributions he’s made here.”
Among Tresnjak’s accomplishments: two shows that premiered at Hartford Stage and then moved to Broadway. “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” was staged at Hartford Stage in 2012, won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2014 (with Tresnjak taking home his own Tony for Best Director),” and made a grand return to Hartford last year at the Bushnell on the show’s first national tour. The musical “Anastasia,” based on an animated feature film, had a pre-Broadway tryout at Hartford Stage in 2016, has been on Broadway since March of 2017, and is currently readying its national and international tours.
Tresnjak has directed more than 15 shows at Hartford Stage, including a Shakespeare play for every season he has been at the theater. His Shakespeares have taken many different stylistic forms, from the gag-filled “Comedy of Errors” (last season) and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (this season) to a “Romeo and Juliet” influenced by 1960s Italian cinema and a “Macbeth” performed in repertory with the Marivaux romance “La Dispute” (with the same actors performing in both shows). Tresnjak designed the sets for four of the Shakespeare plays he directed.
Tresnjak is slated to direct the final show of the current Hartford Stage season, Athol Fugard’s apartheid-themed political drama “A Lesson from Aloes.” Tresnjak had initially planned to direct a different Fugard play, “Statements After an Arrest Under the Immortality Act,” but announced the switch last month.
During Tresnjak’s tenure, Hartford Stage fostered strong relationships with such formidable contemporary playwrights as Matthew Lopez (“Reverberation”) and Quiara Alegria Hudes (“Water by the Spoonful”).
According to the theater, Hartford Stage’s subscriber base grew from 6,000 to 8,000 during Tresnjak’s time there.
Tresnjak was a known quantity in Connecticut when he assumed the artistic leadership of Hartford Stage in 2011. He had directed plays at the Long Wharf Theatre and musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. Tresnjak continued to direct for other institutions while he was at Hartford Stage. In 2016 he directed a production of the Verdi opera “Macbeth” in Los Angeles that starred Placido Domingo, and this fall he will be directing “Samson et Dalila” for New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company.
Before becoming artistic director at Hartford Stage, Tresnjak was artistic director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of “Samson et Dalila.”
