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Departure will ripple through Pittsburgh arts scene
Wednesday, August 09, 2000 By Caroline Abels, Post-Gazette Cultural Arts Writer
City Theatre managing director David Jobin said the theater's staff reacted with surprise to the announcement that Marc Masterson was leaving after 20 years to become artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville.
"He's very much looked at as the founder of the organization," Jobin said, even though Masterson joined five years after the theater was born.
"But this is a huge position he's taking, and it's going to create so much excitement," Jobin noted. "People who are candidates for the position here will be really excited about it when they hear that Marc is going to Louisville."
In addition to his artistic leadership, Masterson is credited with helping put the theater in solid financial shape.
"I marvel at his capacity to understand the business side very clearly and the artistic side beautifully," said former board president Thomas Hollander.
But not only City Theatre will feel his absence. Masterson's departure will ripple through the Pittsburgh arts scene.
He was one of the first leaders of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance, an organization that was formed in the late 1990s to strengthen the arts community's voice by fostering communication between the region's small and large arts groups.
"That's an initiative that was tried many times over the last 50 years, but people were never able to create a situation where the big arts organizations could sit down with the smaller ones," said Bob Frankel, longtime City board member. "Marc was very instrumental in making that happen."
Pittsburgh might also have lost a potential successor to Carol Brown, outgoing president of the Cultural Trust, which built the Downtown cultural district:
"Somebody fairly prominent in the community said last spring that now that the Trust was putting its emphasis on programming rather than real estate, Marc might be the guy to do it," Frankel said. "I didn't think they were far off. I mentioned it to Marc and he said, 'Well, you can never say never.' "
"What Marc has built has had profound, positive implications for the whole local theater scene," said Marilyn Coleman, head of ProArts, a service organization for small and mid-sized arts groups. "His vision and artistic choices have set City Theatre apart and contributed to a healthy, wonderful mix of what's available here."
"We're all leaving," joked Eddie Gilbert, recently-departed head of the Public Theater. "Marc put in yeoman service here, started something, saw it through the difficult times and watched it grow. This [new job] is a wonderful acknowledgment of his worth and his contribution."
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