CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y.: The Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) has announced that artistic director Andrew Borba and managing director Sarah Clare Corporandy will step down from their positions, and national searches to fill the positions will launch shortly. Corporandy will depart in spring 2022, following the appointment of a new managing director, and Borba will step down after the company’s 2022 season in August.
“Andrew and Sarah Clare have led CTC through a period of artistic excellence and company growth that I am incredibly proud of,” said Deborah Sunya Moore, senior vice president and chief program officer for the Chautauqua Institution, in a statement. “From their commitment to new work to their nurturing of conservatory actors and both emerging and celebrated playwrights, we celebrate all that they have accomplished in their many years of service to Chautauqua. They’ve helped build CTC as a first-class summer conservatory program for early-career actors and an innovative laboratory for playwrights, and I’m grateful for their relentless commitment. Incoming leadership will be fortunate to be the inheritors of a company that has both an enviable history and exciting future within American theatre.”
Borba is a veteran actor of film, television, and stage, and has served as CTC’s artistic director since 2016, after a role as the company’s associate artistic director for eight seasons prior. His tenure coincided with the rising profile of CTC’s acclaimed New Play Workshop program, for which he provided leadership as a director, producer, and actor. Borba is also known at Chautauqua for stage appearances and directing Commedia, One Man, Two Guvnors, As You Like It, Noises Off, and The Taming of the Shrew, among others, as well as large-scale amphitheatre inter-arts collaborations such as Mango Suite, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Ellis Island and Go West! He also serves as head of MFA acting and a professor of drama at the University of California-Irvine, where he recently earned tenure.
“One of our slogans at CTC is ‘We Grow Artists,’ and it is no surprise that so many of our former company members, both behind the scenes and on the stage, have gone on to blossom in their theatrical careers after sharing their talents here,” said Borba in a statement. “I am immensely proud of our work and growth these past few years…I have personally grown here as an artist, and moving on, I look forward to more acting and directing work, nationally and internationally, and to be of greater service to UC Irvine. It’s time to take the next step.”
“My experience at Chautauqua has been nothing short of otherworldly,” said Corporandy in a statement. “Chautauqua has given me several of the most transcendent, artistically triumphant moments, as a creator, a producer and as a member of this community. Watching the joy of my child as he grew up here, progressed through the Children’s School program—his ability to explore, commune with nature and the arts, and be recognized by community members with equal joy every which way he turned. I am grateful for the past 13 years I’ve spent in the community, and am proud of what we as a company and community have contributed to the region and to the national theatre scene.”
Corporandy joined CTC in 2009 as company manager and became managing director in 2012. She served as line producer for two inter-arts collaborations, The Romeo & Juliet Project and Go West! Corporandy is co-founder and co-producing artistic director of the Detroit Public Theatre; DPT partnered with CTC on a recent production of Thurgood. She also headed up the CTC and DPT development and production of No Child… and From Broadway to Obscurity in collaboration with WNED Buffalo and Detroit Public Television in 2020. In 2017, she initiated and conceived Detroit Public Theatre’s commission of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles and secured Chautauqua’s role in the development of the piece, now on its way to a March 2022 Broadway debut.
Chautauqua Theater Company is the resident professional theatre and conservatory of Chautauqua Institution, dedicated to the next generation of theater artists, the development of new work, first-rate productions of modern and contemporary classics, and fresh insight into Shakespeare’s canon.
