Court Theatre, the distinguished professional company in residence at the University of Chicago, has hired a new artistic director: Avery Willis Hoffman.
Hoffman, 48, who holds a doctorate in classic languages and literature from Oxford University, has most recently been artistic director of the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, which the university describes as “a catalyst and incubator for the arts at Brown and beyond.” Prior to that, Hoffman was program director at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and a senior project developer at Ralph Appelbaum Associates, a museum planning and design firm.
In a telephone interview, Hoffman praised the theater’s “incredible legacy and history” and said she will first interact with the various constituencies served by the company before making big moves. “I’m always one to spend considerable time listening and acclimating,” she said.
While she has an extensive background in presenting and producing, Hoffman does not have a comparable background in play direction, as did her predecessors. She said she was still thinking about whether she would direct at Court but was more focused on bringing in new voices to the theater. “I’ve been thinking deeply about that,” she said. “In my career, I’ve been on the producing and supporting side of things. I don’t plan on directing three or four of the five shows. I want to bring in more Chicago directors, more female directors, more directors of color. That’s my gut instinct.”
That said, Hoffman certainly matches Court’s long-standing specialty in the classics. “My personal background is steeped in the classics,” she said. “I have a particular passion for the re-intepretation of those plays. I’m really intrigued by the question, ‘How do we define a classic?’ We continue to wrestle with that definition and that’s going to be really fruitful for us as we work with scholars and writers. I’d love us to get into the weeds of how the South Side of Chicago defines a classic.”
Hoffman replaces Charles Newell, the artistic director of Court since 1994, who stepped down last summer after a 30-year run. The search for Hoffman took an atypically long time.
Court began as a campus summer program in the 1950s but was professionalized and somewhat separated from the university by the late Nicholas Rudall, who led the theater for decades prior to his retirement. In more recent years, Court and its university home in Hyde Park have grown more aligned; the search for artistic director was led by the university’s Office of the Provost.
Hoffman begins her new job in November. This is the third major artistic director position in Chicago theater to be filled in recent years, following others at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Goodman Theatre. In all three cases, hires have been made from outside Chicago.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
