BOSTON: Today the board of the Huntington Theatre Company reported the resignation of artistic director Peter DuBois after 12 years in the position. The move comes after what the Boston Globe describes as “months of complaints from current and former staffers” about the theatre’s “handling of a variety of grievances, including layoffs, diversity issues, and salary transparency,” as well as “retaliation from supervisors and an overall lack of accountability in leadership.”
The theatre’s board also announced that in the coming weeks, they “will embark on a process designed to inform the search for a new artistic director…We are committed to listening to the voices within the Huntington family to ensure that we have the guidance needed as we conduct a formal search.” They went on to acknowledge “concerns about the theatre’s workplace environment and issues of structural imbalance.”
In August, a group calling itself Boston BIPOC Theatre created an Instagram account for anonymous posters to cite racial injustices at Boston’s theatres, the many posts were either explicitly or implicitly about incidents at the Huntington.
The Huntington is among those theatres how have put their 2020-21 season on hold. According to the Globe, over the summer the theatre laid off 11 staffers, furloughed 46 others, and eliminated four other positions. They projected lost revenue of around $6.3 million.
