T2 Announces Leadership Transition
After 13-Year Tenure, Executive Director/Producer Martin Miller to Depart in September
Leadership milestones include twentyfold audience expansion, fiftyfold increase in revenue, and construction of two-venue, $31 million permanent home
NORTHWEST ARKANSAS—June 28, 2023—TheatreSquared (T2) Board President Todd Simmons and Artistic Director Bob Ford announced today that the company will undergo a leadership transition this September, when longtime Executive Director/Producer Martin Miller will depart to take on the role of Executive Director for the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey.
"In 2009, when Martin joined TheatreSquared, 3,000 audience members were attending 50 performances in a rented space," said T2 Board President Todd Simmons. "In just over a decade, he and Bob have driven transformational growth. This season, we welcomed 85,000 patrons to more than 400 performances in our beautiful, award-winning new home. From the pages of The New York Times to stages across the country, TheatreSquared is now a name known and respected throughout the industry. We’ll miss Martin profoundly, but we are just as deeply thankful for his indelible contribution to Northwest Arkansas’s cultural landscape and to the American Theatre. He’s leaving a legacy."
"Co-leading TheatreSquared has been a privilege, a joy, and an ever-rewarding adventure," said Miller. "It is wonderful to know that generations of Northwest Arkansans will walk through these doors and experience remarkable art in a space where they truly belong. I’m grateful to Bob, to our amazing team, to the T2 Board, and to all of the generous, risk-taking, and enthusiastic community members who joined us in making this dream a reality. I know that, for TheatreSquared, the best is yet to come."
TheatreSquared’s board has instituted its succession process and appointed an Executive Transition Committee led by Board President Todd Simmons, alongside Esther Silver-Parker, Leigh Hopkins, Judy Schwab, and Bob Ford. The committee will gather input through conversation with key stakeholders and staff and will announce next steps in the succession process by the end of August, prior to Miller’s departure.
Beginning in September, Miller will serve as Executive Director for the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ, joining Artistic Director Sarah Rasmussen to lead the two-time Tony Award-winning institution where Thornton Wilder’s Our Town had its first performance and which will celebrate its 100-year anniversary this decade.
Miller joined TheatreSquared at the conclusion of its third season, returning to Fayetteville after serving as associate producer for Chicago Shakespeare Theater. During the company’s formative years in residence at the Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, in partnership with Artistic Director Robert Ford, he steadily grew attendance and fundraising while supporting the intimate, thought-provoking, artistic work that has become TheatreSquared’s signature offering. He produced 135 plays and developmental workshops while growing the T2 team from a single paid staff member at his arrival to nearly 100 full-time and part-time employees in 2023. He directly supervised fundraising, design and construction for TheatreSquared’s new 50,000-square-foot, permanent home, winner of six national and international architecture awards. After cutting the ribbon in 2019, the company staged just five productions before shutting its doors at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the setback, Miller and Ford committed to keep the company’s staff intact, and immediately began streaming productions into homes, attracting audience members from 50 states and winning rave reviews from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Arkansas’s first Obie Award. The company welcomed audiences back in spring 2021. Under Miller’s financial stewardship, in every season since 2009, TheatreSquared’s revenues have exceeded expenses, growing from $160,000 to $7.5 million annually. The company’s commitment to fostering equity through artmaking, providing broad avenues for access, and supporting an inclusive workplace was recognized with the 2021 Standing Up for Racial Justice Award (Black Action Collective) and the 2022 Latinx Non-Profit Trailblazer Award (LatinXNA Empowerment Forum).
"It's an amazing moment, a chance to briefly hit pause and take stock of just how far T2 has come in such a short amount of time," said Ford. "Martin is a brilliantly talented visionary who's done so much to bring us to where we are. He arrived at a grassroots, small company and departs one of the nation's top producing regional theatres, treasured by its community and celebrated across the American stage. His DNA infuses every aspect of this company and it always will."
PHOTO CREDITS: Ben Goff for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Social Photo) and Wesley Hitt for TheatreSquared (Headshot)