Lance Gardner Is Marin Theatre Company’s New Artistic Director

Marin Theatre Company (MTC) has chosen a new artistic director. Lance Gardner, the Bay Area actor and producer with more than 20 years of experience and acclaimed performances around the region, will step into the role in November.

“The Board is enthusiastic about Mr. Gardner’s vision for innovative programming and forging community partnerships,” read a statement by Matthew Purdon, Board President of MTC, which was founded in 1966. “We eagerly anticipate this exciting next chapter in Marin Theatre Company’s history.”

Gardner, 41, is no stranger to area stages, having acted in roles at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Magic Theatre, TheatreWorks and others. His history with MTC includes roles in A Short History of Nearly Everything, Lovers & Executioners, A Streetcar Named Desire, Fuddy Meers, Shakespeare in Love, Equivocation and Skeleton Crew.

“In some ways it’s felt like an artistic home to me,” Gardner said of the company in a phone interview on Tuesday. “I’ve always appreciated the ambition of not only the choices of the plays, but the actors who work there.”

Part of Gardner’s stated vision is to present work that belongs to the broader community, “rather than laying down the ‘Lance Gardner season,'” he said.

“What I want to do is collaborate with the staff, with Mill Valley and southern Marin, and the Bay Area artistic community, to curate something that feels like it’s ours.”

In addition to his extensive theater credentials, Gardner brings real-world experience, including a two-year stint as a certified EMT providing care in ambulances — and, for the better part of the past four years, he’s worked as a producer of live events for this very media outlet.

Gardner came to KQED in 2019 as a founding producer for KQED Live, which hosts events in The Commons, a 238-person capacity theater at KQED’s headquarters in San Francisco. At the time, his departure from theater was such news that it inspired a San Francisco Chronicle profile by theater critic Lily Janiak, questioning why Bay Area theater couldn’t sustain such a talented and in-demand actor with a living wage.

One thing that Gardner learned in events production, he said, is how to “take into account the things that people like that you either don’t like, or don’t understand.” He himself is a fan of comedy, magical realism and poetry, he noted. But “there are people who are experts in their own tastes out there. And you need those people.”

As for a controversial 2017 MTC premiere of the play Thomas and Sally, about the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, Gardner said he saw the script beforehand and turned down an opportunity to be involved: “I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

Gardner, who is also currently board president at Aurora Theatre Company, succeeds previous MTC artistic director Jasson Minadakis, who left in March after 17 years in the role.

MTC’s managing director Meredith Suttles said in a statement that “I am thrilled to extend a warm welcome to Lance at Marin Theatre Company and look forward to collaborating with him as we together guide this much-loved institution into its next phase.”

Gardner’s first day at MTC is Nov. 6.