Go back to Arts & Features pageBERKELEY -- Sharon Ott, artistic director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is on the hunt for a new job in Minneapolis. According to various sources, Ott has made it onto the short list of candidates to head the Guthrie Theater, one of the dominant regional theaters in the country.
Neither the Guthrie nor the Rep would confirm Ott's candidacy. But sources close to the Rep said Ott has informed the theater's board of directors she intends to interview for the position. The Guthrie is expected to name outgoing artistic director Garland Wright's successor early next year.
For Ott, who has led Berkeley Rep to regional theater prominence during her 11 years here, the Minneapolis post would be a quantum leap into a different sort of organization. With an annual budget of $12 million, the heavily endowed Guthrie is more than twice the size of the Rep, which has a budget of just under $5 million. The Guthrie sustains a standing company of actors, which the Rep, under Ott, has not.
Ott has directed off-Broadway and in regional theaters around the country. Her extravagant production of Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior" recently played Boston and is due in Los Angeles early next year.
Shorenstein Hays Nederlander general manager Tony Reilly said $10,000-15,000 a week spent to advertise touring shows at the Curran, Golden Gate and Orpheum theaters was being diverted to suburban papers. Producers of "My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry," at the Alcazar Theatre, yanked their $7,000-8,000/week from the Chron/Ex and spread it around to radio and other papers.
American Conservatory Theater spokesperson Hollis Ashby said the company's single ticket sales have plunged as a result of the strike. ACT took in $37,000 for "Angels in America" and "Home" the weeked prior to the strike and $20,800 this past weekend. ""It's definitely due to the strike," Ashby said.
"We're really very concerned," said Berkeley Rep marketing director Richard Griffoul. The Rep is spending its Chron/Ex budget on a direct mail campaign for "The Caucasian Chalk Circle."
ACT has appointed Mac Wellman to a year-long playwright-in-residence position. Wellman arrives in December to develop a site specific project about the earthquake-damaged Geary Theater and work on other scripts.
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