Sept. 30 marked the departure of The Old Globe Theatre’s resident artistic director and Shakespeare festival director Darko Tresnjak, whose record at the Balboa Park venue has been exemplary and exciting. He will at least temporarily move across town to direct a reading of Moises Kaufman’s “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later” Oct. 12 at La Jolla Playhouse (550-1010 or www.lajollaplayhouse.org). Tickets are $15, and will benefit the Hillcrest Youth Center, under the wing of the San Diego LGBT Community Center. The young Yugoslavia-born director was already known to former Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien from his work at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Huntington Theatre. San Diego theatergoers first became aware of him when he staged Shakespeare’s seldom-performed “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” during the 2003 Shakespeare festival. It was the summer’s big hit, and in 2004 Tresnjak was invited to head the festival. At a press conference announcing the 2005 Shakespeare festival and also the appointment of Jerry Patch as Globe artistic director, O’Brien remarked, “Darko brings the Shakespeare festival his intelligence and original vision. What we’ve been missing is Jerry Patch.” Noted for his wry sense of humor, Patch remarked he’d heard of Shakespeare, having come from South Coast Repertory, and that he was glad Tresnjak was at the Globe to take care of Shakespeare for him. He intended to discover new plays and devote time to remounting old chestnuts or works that had not received a good first production in New York. Patch left for Manhattan Theatre Club in 2008. Tresnjak, who had been named co-artistic director with Patch, became resident artistic director but never artistic director, and now he is leaving, too, according to the theater’s announcement. An interview request went unfulfilled. According to a theater spokesman, Tresnjak has been on vacation since the final work in the summer repertory, his staging of “Coriolanus,” which opened July 5. Tresnjak is also represented this summer at the Globe by “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Tresnjak deserves every rhapsody ever sung about his work. I remember the accessible Tresnjak coming to an interview the first year of the Shakespeare festival, lugging his enormous production book. He was so enamored of imagery that sometimes he went a bit too far, but he was always worthy of forgiveness. Even his most outrageous excesses were brilliant. He is a sweet, giving soul, filled with love of the art. His leaving is a great loss for The Old Globe and a great tragedy for the city of San Diego. This writer trekked to the Los Angeles Opera for his production of “The Birds,” whereupon he exclaimed, “Oh, it is so good that someone from home came to see my opening!” She will undoubtedly trek to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival next summer to see his “Twelfth Night.” Over six festival seasons, Tresnjak developed a core company of much-admired actors, among them Celeste Ciulla, Charles Janasz, Katie MacNichol and Bruce Turk. When announcing Tresnjak’s departure, Globe executive producer Louis G. Spisto also announced the appointment of former Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Adrian Noble as artistic director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in 2010. Hopes are high for Noble, and Tresnjak will be fine between directing the classics and opera. He made his London debut last season with a critically acclaimed production of “The Merchant of Venice,” which he originated at New York’s Theatre for a New Audience. For info about the Old Globe, visit www.theoldglobe.org or call (619) 23-GLOBE.
