By Caitlin Walsh, News Staff
On April 26, the Tony Award Administration Committee announced that local Boston group the Huntington Theatre Company was the awarded the 2013 Tony Award for Regional Theatre.
The Company’s Communication Manager Rebecca Curtiss said the award is given annually to one theatre company that “has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theatre nationally.” Though The Huntington has won numerous local, regional and national recognitions in the past, the Tony, which can only be won once by a theatre and includes a $25,000 award.
“I was shopping in Target when I received a call around 12:30 p.m. on my cell phone from someone at the Broadway League who asked me to send the Huntington logo to him immediately but couldn’t tell me why,” Curtiss said of the day she first heard they had won. “I suspected it was related to the Regional Tony Award, and I started crying with excitement as soon as I hung up. I received the call from the Broadway League notifying me that we had won around 6 p.m., and called [managing director] Michael Maso back to give him the official word. Then we kicked into high gear. The mood in the office since we heard has been more than festive, as you might imagine.”
The Huntington Theatre Company is the third company in the state of Massachusetts to have won the award since its official start in 1976, following up Cambridge and Williamstown. The company is compiled of talented professionals, including artistic director Peter DuBois and managing director Michael Maso — both of whom Curtiss, who has been with the company since 2008, said she has intense admiration for.
“I admire Peter for his leadership, his energy and vision and his unwavering commitment to the artists who work here,” Curtiss said. “He embodies our organizational commitment to developing and producing new works and also classics made current. And our managing director Michael Maso has led the company since the fall of 1982, just a few months after it was founded. He is regarded as one of the finest managing directors in the nation. Their long-term commitments to the Huntington is a testament to its mission and sense of community.”
Curtiss talks about the company in a team-like manner — they are banded together, and their group effort is what paid off.
“I often remind people that we are not the ‘Huntington Theatre’ – in fact, there is no Huntington Theatre, we produce in two venues, neither of which is named the Huntington – but rather the ‘Huntington Theatre Company,’ comprised of the artists, craftsmen, artisans and administrators who work here.”
The company, on a roll from their win, has big plans for continuing their success, Curtiss said.
“After two acclaimed and wildly successful seasons including a number of hit productions and milestones including “Candide,” “Luck of the Irish,” “Our Town,”completing the August Wilson Century Cycle, and celebrating our 30th anniversary, we’re kicking off next season with the largest and most ambitious production in our history: a new adaptation of “The Jungle Book,” based on the Disney animated film and the Kipling short stories, with book and direction by MacArthur Fellow Mary Zimmerman, who was last here with ‘Candide’,” Curtiss said.
