ST. PAUL, MINN.: Flordelino Lagundino has been named the new artistic director of St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre. He will be the first artistic director to have the official title of John W. Harris Family Artistic Director, and the third artistic director in the company’s 46-year history. Lagundino will begin his work on Aug. 1 and will have an overlap with current artistic director Richard Cook until Cook’s official retirement on Sept. 1.
“Flordelino is both a theatre-maker and a company-builder, which builds on our history,” Cook said in a statement. “I believe Flordelino will be able to honor all that’s best about Park Square while leading us to a new place: as a vigorously inclusive, leading-edge theatre-maker, deeply embedded in the Twin Cities—with a voice bigger than our size that can and deserves to be heard nationally. How promising and exciting!”
Lagundino is the outgoing artistic director for Juneau, Alaska’s Generator Theater Company, and previously served as the artistic director of Leviathan Lab, a New York company that encourages the work of Asian American artists. He is based in N.Y. and travels all over the U.S. for his work. Previous work in the Twin Cities includes the Mixed Blood Theatre’s Ivey Award-winning Vietgone and the Guthrie Theater’s Blithe Spirit. Lagundino also worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, the Old Globe Theatre, and the Kennedy Center, among others, and is the recipient of the 2018 SDC Sir John Gielgud Classical Theatre Directing Fellowship and the 2017 Drama League New York Directing Fellowship. He received an MFA in acting from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in directing from Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company.
As a Filipino artist who has felt invisible in the past, Lagundino said that he was attracted to Park Square because it is deeply beloved and champions inclusion.
“We will build this theatre with love,” Flordelino said in a statement. “Audiences will see it in the details and care we put into our productions. Students will feel it in how we welcome them into our theatre. The board will know it as they invite new friends to the hottest show in town. People who have been othered will see it when actors who look like them share their stories.”
“His warm and generous spirit, commitment to artistic excellence, education and full inclusion make him the perfect choice to lead the next era of Park Square’s community impact,” said succession committee co-chairs Jewelie Grape and Nancy Feldman in a statement.
Founded in 1975, Park Square Theatre is a leading producer of contemporary plays in the Twin Cities.
