(Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 7/22.)
Des McAnuff, the artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, North America's largest and arguably most prestigious, classically based theater, has announced his intention to leave his post in 2013.
Personal decisions are always complex, and this may well be just a negotiating position. Still, McAnuff should think hard. The marriage of this famously populist and audacious directing talent with the institutional resources, technical prowess, training, craft and, yes, dignity of a long-established theater forged by Tyrone Guthrie and the great designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, serves the art and the interests of both parties uncommonly well.