Charles Newell, the artistic director of Chicago’s Court Theatre since 1994, will step down as artistic director next summer after a 30-year run, the theater is announcing Friday.
“This is a good time for me to look for my next challenge,” said Newell, 66. He is only the second artistic director of the Hyde Park theater, after founding artistic director Nicholas Rudall. Court Theatre is resident at the University of Chicago and dates back to an outdoor summer theater in the 1950s. Newell’s exit is yet another high-profile departure of a long-serving artistic leader in the Chicago theater.
Newell told the Tribune Thursday that he first contemplated leaving around 2019 but ended up staying longer to help the theater through the tough years of the pandemic.
That certainly paid off. Court Theatre won the 2022 Tony Award for excellence in regional theater, an honor that Newell said raised the company’s profile and, helpfully for the future, that of its artistic director. “Court came back strong,” he said. “I think this theater is now in an excellent place for a new leader.”
The transition will be gradual. Newell said he will program the 2024-25 season and will direct one of the shows. He also will remain as a consultant for the year after he steps down next summer, serving the theater as it deems necessary.
Longer term, he said he intends to remain a Chicago resident and direct elsewhere in the city. The search for Newell’s replacement at Court Theatre will be managed by the university which, over the years, has become more closely involved with the running of the theater, although Court retains a separate board of directors.
Court’s location on the Hyde Park campus has afforded it the luxury of finding a ready audience for weighty intellectual fare, and it long has specialized in literary adaptations and canonical works, such as Moliere comedies, the Homeric adaptation of “An Iliad,” and Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” That said, Newell worked hard over the last decade to find new collaborators and to make the theater more responsive to its South Side neighborhood, staging such pieces as “Porgy and Bess” and “Raisin” (a musical version of “A Raisin in the Sun”). Most recently, Newell co-directed “The Gospel at Colonus” with Mark J. P. Hood, an acclaimed production that traveled to the Getty Villa outside Los Angeles.
Newell’s reputation as a director has become formidable, especially when it comes to fresh takes on the classics. But collaborations with the writers David Auburn (”Proof”) and Tom Stoppard (”Travesties”) also have been productive. And unlike many of his peers, Newell worked constantly over the years with a small group of actor-collaborators, allowing them to invest in the theater and feel part of its mission.
Asked for the work of which he was most proud, Newell cited some of the above pieces as well as a fine 2008 production of the musical “Caroline, or Change,” penned by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori.
“My goal always has been to make theater that changes people’s hearts,” Newell said. “I feel so blessed that Court has been my artistic home all these years. This has been the job of a lifetime.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.