NEW YORK CITY: Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) has announced that Dorothy Ryan will take over the position of executive director, as founding artistic director Jeffrey Horowitz departs the company August 31. Ryan has served as TFANA’s managing director since 2003; under her leadership, TFANA developed the Polonsky Shakespeare Center; expanded its arts education programs serving New York City public schools, and navigated the financial crash of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. After Horowitz departs, TFANA will adopt a shared leadership model, with the responsibilities split between an executive and an artistic director. Ryan will work alongside the previously announced new artistic director Arin Arbus. Both Ryan and Arbus will begin their respective new roles on September 1.
NEW YORK CITY: Roundabout Theatre Company has announced Rebecca Habel as its new managing director. She will begin consulting this fall and fully assume the position in January 2026. Habel and Christopher Ashley, Roundabout’s incoming artistic director, will comprise a new co-leadership model. She returns to Roundabout after previously spending six years as general manager of its Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, where she launched the Roundabout Underground program with Todd Haimes, and the formerly named American Airlines Theatre on Broadway (now the Todd Haimes Theatre). Habel was the general manager and managing director at Vineyard Theater. She is a partner at TT Partners, where she has served as general manager and/or executive producer of the Broadway premieres of Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California, Peter Morgan’s Patriots, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, and Tony nominee Illinoise. In this new position, Habel will lead Roundabout’s business management and administration. Current interim CEOs Scott Ellis, Sydney Beers, and Christopher Nave have led Roundabout since Todd Haimes’s passing in 2023. Beers and Nave will continue to work with Habel and Ashley, as executive producer and chief advancement officer respectively.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Studio Theatre has announced that artistic director David Muse has chosen to leave when his current contract concludes in August 2027, which will be the end of his 17th season. He will continue his position for two years before he leaves. Muse was previously associate artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company and succeeded Studio founder Joy Zinoman in 2010. At Studio, he has produced 120 productions, including 17 world premieres; directed 26 plays; established Studio R&D, its new work incubator; significantly increased artist compensation; created the Studio Cabinet, an artist advisory board; and overseen Open Studio, a $20 million expansion and upgrade of Studio’s four-theatre complex. In a letter to the community, Muse said though it was a “difficult decision…I’ve accomplished most of what I set out to do here, and I’ve begun to feel a certain restlessness and hunger for new challenges. I’m also of the mind that jobs like mine shouldn’t be forever ones, because theatres are refreshed by new leadership.” Studio will search for his replacement to work with executive director Rebecca Ende Lichtenberg and plan for a transition.
NEW YORK CITY: Theater Mitu founding artistic director and arts professor Rubén Polendo has been announced as the new dean of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, effective August 15. He will be the fifth dean of the school, which was founded in 1965 and has trained generations of artists, and succeeds Allyson Green, who served as dean since 2014. Polendo has been affiliated with NYU since 2009, when he became the founding director of the transglobal theatre program at NYU Abu Dhabi, and in 2016, he was named chair of Tisch’s Department of Drama in New York, directing one of the nation’s largest conservatory theatre programs. During his tenure, he redefined the department’s vision and mission, modernized key training programs and curriculum, and launched forward-looking initiatives exploring the intersections of performance and technology as founding director of Tisch’s Innovation Studio.
CHICAGO: Court Theatre has announced that Avery Willis Hoffman will be its next artistic director. A visionary leader and producer with over two decades of experience in theatre, opera, music, and interdisciplinary performance, Hoffman will join Court in fall 2025 as a co-leader alongside executive director Angel Ysaguirre. Hoffman will succeed Charles Newell, who served as artistic director for three decades. She most recently served as the inaugural artistic director of the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, and is also the founder of Avery Productions, where she has produced international tours and groundbreaking performances with acclaimed artists across genres. Her collaborative practice spans the performing and visual arts, including partnerships with institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, National Black Theatre, New York City Opera, and the Aspen Institute. She holds a DPhil and MSt in classical languages and literature from the University of Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a BA in classics and English from Stanford University. Her scholarship and theatrical work consistently bridge classical texts and contemporary relevance—an approach that aligns closely with Court Theatre’s mission to reimagine classic theatre for modern audiences.
