Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

After a longish search, the board of the Public Theater of San Antonio has selected Los Angeles-based Claudia de Vasco to serve as its new artistic/executive director. A native of Houston, she has a long resume that includes acting, directing, production, and leadership positions.

“The search committee felt that she has the skills and qualities that can best move the organization forward,” said Jeff Morden, the Public’s interim executive director. “They took into account not only her arts leadership but also her experience with equity and diversity, and her ability to reach historically underserved audiences. We felt that she could increase the patron base and bring greater diversity, not only to productions that we stage, but also diversity of performers and others working on productions.”

The family-friendly programming focus that San Antonians expect from companies occupying the historic San Pedro Playhouse, will continue, said Morden, but “we will be adding other shows that may not be appropriate for the entire family. We don’t want to limit our audiences. We know that that are many other voices that deserve to be heard on our stages, and patrons who currently don’t find plays here that interest them. We want to attract additional audiences, not change our audiences.”

In her career, De Vasco has appeared in a number of TV series, and performed with well-respected theater companies, including The Mixed Blood Company in Minneapolis, which was a pioneer in color-blind casting; the San Diego Repertory, Independent Shakespeare Co., Shock Pulse and the Shakespeare Center LA. She ’was the artistic-producing director of Chalk Repertory Theatre, in LA for two years, and a member of the group’s Producing Artistic Circle for five. More recently, she served as Head of Cultural Integrity at BrickHouse Talent, and engineered a merger with Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles, something that she cites as her most important accomplishment. De Vasco is also part of The Kilroys, described as a collective of female playwrights, producers and directors “disrupting the theater space to achieve gender parity in American Theater.”

“Two things attracted me to the San Antonio position,” explained De Vasco in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “First, this position is a hybrid role of artistic and executive director. I have a range of experiences that are needed in both those roles, so this was a unique opportunity to combine the expertise I have gained over the years, doing the things that I call “my home base.” I’ve been in theater since I was a little girl. The other thing that attracted me was that the position was in Texas. I am from Texas, and now that I am a mother with two young children, I wanted to be closer to my family.”

When she gets here in a few weeks, her priority will be to connect with the artistic community but also with the broader San Antonio community. Her experience in community organizing and outreach has shown her the importance of laying the ground work of building those connections and creating strategic partnerships. “And I know that the Public is in a place where it needs to build those connections,” she noted. “I think it’s easy for an artistic director to jump into the creative aspect of theater, but for myself, I want to familiarize myself with who the audience is and what “theater for all” means.”

 At the Public, De Vasco is succeeding George Green who left after leading San Antonio’s highest profile thespian enterprise for several years. The Public has been mostly closed since late February 2020 but maintained a presence in the community through small-scale online cabaret shows and a few solo plays. The upcoming season is packed with full-scale musicals, from the season opener “tick, tick… BOOM!” to “Once on This Island” scheduled to close the season in 2022. In between you’ll find “Plaid Tidings,” “She Loves Me,” “A Bronx Tale – The Musical,” and “35MM: A Musical Exhibition.”

De Vasco is not going to make any tweaking of the programming until she gets a better sense of the community’s needs and preferences.

 The new artistic/executive director will be working remotely from her LA home for a while but is planning to move with her family to San Antonio by mid-October. “Her energy and ideas, and collaborative style will serve our organization well,” said Morden.
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