This outspoken Bay Area actor just got hired to lead Marin Theatre Company

“Our audience is not going to be a monolith,” Lance Gardner told the Chronicle of his plans for the Mill Valley company.

Lance Gardner, KQED’s live events producer for editorial, helped run Night of Ideas, a free event at San Francisco Public Library on Feb. 1, 2020.

Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

In 2020, Bay Area actorLance Gardnertold the Chronicle he’d left theater, despite delivering rock-star performances as weirdos and lovers, conflicted middle managers and out-and-out clowns at top Bay Area companies, because acting simply didn’t pay enough.

Now, after nearly four years of producing events for KQED, Gardner is returning to the industry as Marin Theatre Company’s new artistic director, succeedingJasson Minadakis,who departed abruptly in the spring.

Gardner, 41, emphatically doesn’t see his appointment, announced Wednesday, Oct. 11, as a career shift, characterizing it instead as “something that I have wanted for as long as I have been working.”

Lance Gardner, left, and Aysan Celik perform during a dress rehearsal of “The War of the Roses,” Eric Ting’s adaptation of four of Shakespeare’s history plays — the “Henry VI” trilogy and “Richard III” — into a single evening of theater at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda in 2018.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

Board president Matthew Purdon said the Mill Valley theater selected Gardner from a nationwide search that yielded more than 100 applicants. Even when Gardner was an actor, Purdon said, “he was not just focused on his part. He cares about the entire environment that everyone’s working in.” Now Gardner has a range of experience: In addition to his role at KQED and his acting work, Gardner is also the board president at Aurora Theatre Company.

Purdon also praised Gardner’s ability to listen, noting that the theater world no longer seeks leaders in the mode of the great man theory. “It’s not a single person’s decision anymore,” he said.

Having acted under many artistic directors, Gardner has a vision for the kind of leader he wants to be and the kind he doesn’t.

Lance Gardner performs as BJJ in “An Octoroon” at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2017.

Photo: Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre

If a theater does well at the box office, Gardner said, “sometimes it’s because of a sort of dictatorial, monolithic celebrity artistic director — people come to see this person’s season and this person’s plays — and in a medium that is supposed to be so collaborative.”

“I don’t agree with that definition of success,” he continued, proffering an alternative: “giving people an opportunity to feel like they’ve really contributed to the work that we’re doing.”

At KQED, Gardner mounted a range of events — everything from a dating show to an appearance with Nancy Pelosi — and at MTC he’s excited to explore ways to draw audiences in beyond the standard slate of main stage offerings.

“Our audience is not going to be a monolith,” he said, noting that different demographics can come to different kinds of events.

Lance Gardner, KQED’s live events producer for editorial, helps run Night of Ideas, a free event at San Francisco Public Library on Feb. 1, 2020. At KQED, Gardner mounted a range of events — everything from a dating show to an appearance with Nancy Pelosi.

Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

When he starts on Nov. 6, he joins a company that’s suffered more than just the low attendance that afflicts most theaters in the long tail of COVID, and more than the sudden departure of Gardner’s predecessor. Many local Black theater artists protested the company’s 2017 production of“Thomas and Sally,”about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and for years thereafter the company struggled to regain trust and rebuild its reputation.

Gardner said the way to lead an organization past difficulty is “first and foremost by listening.”

“作为一个演员,我一直一个人people felt that they could come to with their thoughts and grievances as they related to theater management or a director,” he said, noting that people knew they could rely on him as an advocate. “I was going to speak my mind and go to bed feeling good about myself.”

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com

  • Lily Janiak
    Lily Janiak

    Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. She holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State.