Roosevelt University is welcoming a new executive director of its landmark Auditorium Theatre this week—but the face is familiar. The new CEO, hired after a search that had some painful moments, is Rich Regan, the Auditorium’s well-regarded general manager from 1999 to 2006. He’s been hired away from Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he was vice president and general manager of Presentations and Events.
And that wasn’t the worst disruption in Roosevelt’s summer. On that same June day, Netta Walker, a dropout from Roosevelt’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, won a Non-Equity Jeff Award for outstanding work in Raven Theatre’s production of Yen and was inspired to go public with her own complaints about discrimination and abuse in the program. Her June 4 Facebook post attracted hundreds of comments amplifying her complaints, and led to a petition on change.org demanding the ouster of faculty member Sean Kelley, who’d been the longtime associate dean of CCPA’s theater conservatory. (Attempts to reach Kelley were unsuccessful.)
This, Walker said, is “one massive step in the right direction.” But “it wasn’t just one teacher,” she added. “It spanned years, with multiple people. It’s about fixing all of the structural issues, and that’s not going to be an overnight thing.” v
