In a coup for Chicago at a crucial moment, Edward Hall, a 57-year-old British director with extensive experience running theater companies, will be the new artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Hall is the son of the late, legendary British director Sir Peter Hall, who founded Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and also ran the National Theatre. He will succeed founding CST artistic director, Barbara Gaines
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, who was at her post for 37 years. The nonprofit theater’s board of directors makes the announcement Wednesday.“I am going to move to Chicago, immerse myself in the Chicago theater community and make my life there,” Hall said in a telephone interview. He said he would start as soon as his work visa is approved, most likely this fall.
Chicago Shakespeare also announced the hiring of Kimberly Motes, 56, most recently the managing director of Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis, as its new executive director, replacing Criss Henderson, who resigned last August. Motes, who also expects to start in the fall, has an extensive background in fundraising, having been development director at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., for five years, as well as senior vice president for institutional advancement at the University of St. Thomas.
“Chicago Shakespeare really is like a mini National Theatre, and in The Yard, you’ve got an extraordinarily adaptable new space that you can do almost anything in,” Hall said. “I will have a chance to build on what Barbara and Criss have done. And I want to get Shakespeare talking across all of our stages.”
Hall was introduced to Chicago in 2003 with his production of “Rose Rage,” a surreal, bloody and all-male adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy. He also was already scheduled to direct a new production of “Richard III” in February, suggesting the hiring, or the potential for the hiring on both sides, long has been in the works.
Although he has also worked in film and TV, Hall is known in theater circles for his work with Propeller, an all-male Shakespeare ensemble known for rigorous textual and physical work. Most recently, though, he was artistic director of the Hampstead Theatre, a small but prestigious London theater mostly known for new work. Hall left the theater in 2019 after some nine years in the job. The Hampstead Theatre was at the center of a firestorm last winter after the British Arts Council removed its public funding, leading to the resignation of Hall’s successor, Roxana Silbert. With an annual budget of some $20 million, Chicago Shakespeare is a far bigger operation.
Once he arrives in Chicago, Hall said he plans to reinvigorate the beloved World’s Stage series, a season of theatrical work originating in other nations and long one of this theater’s crown jewels. During the pandemic, international touring fell off and it is only now beginning to recover.
“We should be doing event theater in The Yard, a wonderful place for producers to start new work,” Hall said, speaking of an imagined future mix of big musicals, epic revivals and other large-format theatrical events across CST’s Navy Pier campus.
Hall’s appointment comes at a time of crisis, at worse, or recession, at best, in the nonprofit theater. Motes said she was aware of the situation. “With some of the shifts that are happening in philanthropy, especially corporate philanthropy,” she said, “we have to continue to reinforce the enormous value of theater.”
As is typical with new leaders coming into the Chicago theater community, both Hall and Motes said they would begin by listening and learning from those already here. Both also said they hoped to remove barriers to participation.
On its face, this highly experienced new team at CST looks more like a traditional artistic and executive director partnership for one of Chicago’s leading cultural institutions, with Hall helming the artistic mission and Motes overseeing both the administration and the ever-crucial fundraising; previously, Henderson had functioned more as a co-producer, especially when it came to the World’s Stage series.
Chicago Shakespeare board of directors chair Paulita A. Pike called the theater’s new hires “ambitious, creative, and highly capable individuals,” likely to “further raise Chicago Shakespeare’s profile with a bold, forward-thinking vision.”
As difficult as the current moment may be, that’s likely the best way forward for a flagship artistic institution that only has had one set of leaders in its history.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.