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By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 19, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- For the third time in four years, American Stage's artistic director has left the theater over differences with the board of trustees.
Kenneth N. Mitchell, artistic director since 1998, said the board asked him to resign Thursday afternoon because of friction between him and managing director Lee M. Lowry.
"The managing director and myself have had for a long time a disagreement in the structure of the theater," Mitchell said. "It was very difficult to consolidate the theater under one cohesive vision. It just came to a point that we could no longer work it out."
Board president Marion Ballard told staff members of Mitchell's resignation in a meeting at the theater. In a phone interview, she wouldn't elaborate except to say Mitchell's resignation was "a personnel issue."
The shakeup has a sense of deja vu. In 1997, the board let go artistic director Lisa Powers. A year later, her successor, Jody Kielbasa, met the same fate and was replaced by a power-sharing arrangement between Mitchell and Lowry.
Founded in 1977, American Stage is the longest-running professional theater in the Tampa Bay area, and it had some hits under Mitchell. Last spring's production of A Couple of Blaguards broke box-office records. Spunk, a stage adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston stories directed by Mitchell, opened this season to good reviews and ticket sales that met budget projections.
Mitchell, 42, did have one disastrous flop, his 2000 production of Twelfth Night to a disco beat for the popular Shakespeare in the Park series. Audiences stayed away, and a flap over some mildly risque staging cost the theater sponsors for the show's weeklong run in Tampa.
This year's Shakespeare show, Love's Labour's Lost, was more warmly received, but it did not transfer to Tampa.
Mitchell said programming was not the reason for his departure.
"We basically agreed on that. It was more my role in marketing, my role in development. . . . I think the artistic director needs to be at the forefront of the theater, and I felt I was not able to do that. It just came to the point where I had to answer to the managing director as opposed to leading the theater."
Ballard said the 2001-02 season will proceed as planned. The Immigrant by Mark Harelik is the next show, opening Nov. 9
"We will be searching for an interim artistic director," she said. "We plan to hire a theater consultant to analyze the structure of American Stage, both artistic and management."
Mitchell thinks the board is the problem: "I don't believe they really understand the importance of the artistic director. The two-headed structure doesn't work. This problem keeps happening, and you can't keep saying it's the artistic director's fault."