Playhouse’s Stein joins LORT board

Tom Titus

The Laguna Playhouse will be represented on the board of the League

of Resident Theaters with the just-announced appointment of its

executive director, Richard Stein, to a board position.

The league is the governing body of professional nonprofit theater

organizations, which operate under an Actors Equity contract.

“LORT’s primary importance to the Laguna Playhouse and other

resident theaters is the ability to collectively bargain

non-commercial contracts with the theatrical artists’ unions that

reflect the economic realities of nonprofit theaters,” Stein said.

“The artists benefit by having a standard contract that is honored

across the nation in 75 nonprofit resident theaters,” he noted. “The

imprimatur of LORT membership signifies theaters that are recognized

as important cultural institutions in their communities, regionally

and nationally.”

Stein has held the top position at the Laguna Playhouse since

1990, when the theater shifted from a non-professional, community

theater group to full Equity status. He’s been juggling

administrative and directing duties ever since, sharing the latter

with Andrew Barnicle, the playhouse’s artistic director.

Among the productions Stein has staged for the playhouse are “The

Price,” “Gun-Shy,” “Travels With My Aunt,” “A Child’s Christmas in

Wales,” the world premiere of “The Labors of Hercules,” the West

Coast premiere of Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things” (now on the

cinema screens) and two works from Jon Marans -- “Old Wicked Songs”

and the world premiere of “Jumping for Joy,” his most recent

accomplishment.

Stein holds degrees from Columbia and Syracuse universities, and

co-founded the Contemporary Theater of Syracuse, a semi-professional

theater company still thriving in upstate New York, where he produced

and directed a number of plays.

From 1982 to 1987, he was director of the University of Hartford’s

Lincoln Theater, drawing nationally recognized regional theater

companies to perform there.

He moved west in 1987 to take the helm of the Grove Shakespeare

Festival through 1990 and his Laguna appointment. While in this post,

he was sent to Korea by the International Theater Institute on a

cultural exchange in 1988.

The new LORT board member has served as a theater site evaluator,

grants panelist or technical assistance consultant for the California

Arts Council, the Western States Arts Federation, the New England

Foundation for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

Stein also is active in arts fund-raising programs in Orange

County, having been president of the board of the county chapter of

the National Society of Fund Raising Executives. He’s chaired the

John Wayne Airport Arts Commission, which oversees arts programs in

Orange County’s airport. He and his wife, Alison, a textile designer,

live in San Juan Capistrano.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.