AMERICAN THEATRE | WAM Theatre Co-Founder Kristen van Ginhoven to Step Down

LENOX, MASS.: WAM Theatre has introduced that co-founder and producing creative director Kristen van Ginhoven will step down from her place in December after serving within the group for 14 years. WAM plans a nationwide seek for her successor, who will assume creative management in January 2024,  coinciding with celebrations of the Firm’s fifteenth Anniversary Season.

Van Ginhoven, a twin Canadian/American citizen, co-founded WAM Theatre in 2010 with a mission to make use of arts as activism, with a concentrate on gender fairness specifically, by creating alternatives for individuals who establish as girls and women. Throughout her tenure, she grew WAM’s funds from $10,000 to $500,000, increasing WAM’s packages and initiatives alongside the board and employees. She programmed and produced 20 mainstage productions, together with such regional premieres as Winter Miller’s In Darfur and Lauren Gunderson’s Emilie, and such world premieres as Anne Undeland’s Girl Randy. She additionally launched the Recent Takes Play Studying Sequence, now in its tenth yr, and partnered with larger-budget regional theatres on co-productions and displays, together with Washington, D.C.’s Enviornment Stage and Dallas Theatre Heart.

Previously 14 years, WAM’s distinctive philanthropic mission has resulted in over $85,000 in donations to greater than 25 native, nationwide, and worldwide sister organizations on the entrance traces of gender fairness round such points as woman’s schooling, home violence and teenage being pregnant prevention, electing girls politicians, therapeutic circles for Indigenous girls, entry to reproductive care, advocating for reproductive rights, and care for ladies veterans.

“Co-founding WAM Theatre and contributing to its development has been probably the most significant expertise of my skilled life to this point,” mentioned van Ginhoven in an announcement. “From our humble beginnings in 2010 to nurturing WAM to a spot the place I do know I can step apart and it’s 100% able to fly into the subsequent section of affect with out me is such an accomplishment—for us all.”

In line with her assertion, the corporate has been getting ready for its subsequent chapter by bringing on Molly Merrihew as our managing director, supported by the board, and settling into a brand new central workplace in Lenox. The theatre has additionally launched the second section of its NEXT ACT FUND, a particular $100,000 fund to safeguard, maintain, amplify, and uplift WAM’s subsequent chapter.

“Kristen’s management and imaginative and prescient for WAM and our Berkshire neighborhood will probably be felt and appreciated lengthy past her time as the manufacturing creative director at WAM Theatre,” mentioned Toni Buckley, president of the board of administrators, in an announcement. “Together with her real ardour and compassion for every little thing she does and everybody she works with, Kristen has had a deep and lasting affect on all of us. Her fierce and brave advocacy and activism within the Berkshires, the state, and on a nationwide degree evokes me significantly.” 

Added Merrihew in an announcement, “WAM was began in a recession, we’ve got weathered (to date!) a pandemic, and overcome many different organizational transitions. WAM is thought for thriving throughout change, and this pivotal second creates a chance of development for our group.”

The present co-production with Berkshire Theatre Group of What the Structure Means to Me, which runs by means of June 3, is the final play van Ginhoven will direct for WAM as producing creative director.

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