MINNEAPOLIS: Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) has announced that artistic director Peter Brosius will leave on June 30, 2024, at the end of the 2023-24 Season, after 27 years at the job. Brosius’s artistic vision helped to transform the theatre into the nation’s leading theatre serving a multi-generational audience.
“I have loved every moment of my time here,” said Brosius in a statement. “It has been an honor and a privilege to be an advocate for young people, for their intelligence, their dignity, and their agency. I have been filled with endless joy and hope for the future by their enthusiasm and their optimism. I have had the great good fortune of working with brilliant artists who brought their whole hearts and talents to this work. The staff and board at CTC are all so deeply committed to our mission and to truly making a difference in the lives of our community. It has been a pleasure to work with my partners in leadership, and most recently it has been a joy to move this theatre forward with Kim Motes.”
Brosius took the helm of CTC in 1997 and has since produced more than 187 productions, including more than 70 new commissoned works. Championing new works and building the canon of plays that center young people was at the heart of Brosius’s artistic vision. Writers whose works premiered at CTC have included Cheryl West, Nilo Cruz, Naomi Iizuka, Larissa FastHorse, Itamar Moses, Jerome Hairston, Barry Kornhauser, Lloyd Suh, Will Power, Liz Duffy Adams, Carlos Murillo, Kia Corthron, Philip Dawkins, and Greg Banks.
A major new initiative, Generation Now, partners CTC with Penumbra, Latino Theatre Company, Mai Yi, and Native Voices at the Autry to commission and develop 16 new plays and musicals by Black, Indigenous, Asian American Pacific Islander, and Latinx writers for a multigenerational audience. Brosius also introduced preschool programming to CTC, commissioning original works as well as presenting extraordinary preschool productions from across the globe.
Under Brosius’s leadership, CTC moved A Year with Frog and Toad to Broadway, and received the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 2003. During Brosius’ tenure, CTC more than doubled its annual budget, from $6 to $13 million, grew its endowment from $2 to $12 million, and expanded its physical space with a $30 million expansion in 2005, when it added the Cargill Stage, the McGuire Education Center, and production shops. Today, CTC is one of top 25 regional theatre companies in the country and the largest children’s theatre in North America.
CTC’s education programs now serve more than 70,000 students through theatre arts training, student matinees, and innovative curriculum in schools such as Neighborhood Bridges and Creative Play Workshops to build critical literacy and emotional literacy skills in students. A new, immersive model has been developed with Bethune Elementary in North Minneapolis, where CTC teaching artists are in 100 percent of the classrooms.
Brosius is the recipient of TCG’s Alan Schneider Directors’ Award, the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Sara Spencer Artistic Achievement Award, and the 2013 Ivey Award for Best Director and two best production Ivey Awards in 2013 and 2016. He has served on the boards of the Playwrights Center, Theatre Communications Group, and ASSITEJ/USA, and has worked to develop the Minnesota Theatre Alliance and the Twin Cities Large Cultural Organizations Forum.
“Peter’s visionary artistic excellence, devotion to our community, advocacy for justice and equity, and passion for our audience permeates throughout the vast body of work accomplished in his remarkable career,” said board chair Silvia Perez in a statement. “Peter’s legacy in theatre for young audiences is unparalleled, impacting arts at a local, national, and international level, but even more impressive is his positive imprint in millions of minds exposed to his work at CTC.”
The CTC board of directors has hired Management Consultants for the Arts to conduct the search for the next artistic director, who is slated begin on July 1.
