American Stage, the oldest professional theater company in the Tampa Bay area, has announced the departure of Producing Artistic Director Helen R. Murray, effective immediately.<\/p>\n
A reason for Murray\u2019s exit was not given in the brief announcement posted on the nonprofit\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Murray was American Stage\u2019s third artistic director in five years. She replaced Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, who held the position for six months in 2021 and \u201822.<\/p>\n
Maharaj was hired to replace Stephanie Gularte, who resigned for health reasons in 2021.<\/p>\n
Gularte was diagnosed with the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa. She had served as producing artistic director since 2015.<\/p>\n
Gularte has been re-hired as a Strategic Consultant, offering strategic counsel to staff, including Interim Artistic Director Anthony Gervais, and board leadership.<\/p>\n
Murray arrived from Aurora, Colorado, where she had been executive director of the Aurora Fox Arts Center. Prior to that, she was co-founder and 10-year Artistic Director of The Hub Theater in Fairfax, Virginia.<\/p>\n
During her tenure at American Stage, Murray wrote, and directed, for the stage. She programmed the last three seasons of shows. Most recently, she directed the Demens Landing Park production of Into the Woods.<\/p>\n
Murray was the driving force behind the \u201cSave Park\u201d fundraising effort, launched to cover the mounting expenses of the Demens Landing shows.<\/p>\n
American Stage and other professional theaters have felt the sting of both the pandemic, and its aftermath, and the elimination of state arts funding under Florida governor Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re stable, but we\u2019re not back to our pre-Covid numbers in either attendance or income,\u201d Murray told the Catalyst in March. \u201cAnd quite frankly, and not to be dark about it, we\u2019ve lost people. People have passed on, and some of our larger donors moved away after the hurricanes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we are seeing an uptick. While we\u2019re seeing growth, it\u2019s not at the speed we would like it to be. So we have to be very careful and mindful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerican Stage\u2019s leadership and Board are working closely together to ensure a seamless transition,\u201d the online notice read, \u201cand the upcoming season will move forward as planned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Messages sent\u00a0 to American Stage, Murray, Gervais and Gularte were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American Stage, the oldest professional theater company in the Tampa Bay area, has announced the departure of Producing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-282249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}