As did the ensemble before them in 2011, the current playwrights ensemble blasted the theater on social media for excluding them from the process of deciding new leadership and ignoring the artistic community it purported to serve.
At the time he was hired, Yew was one of the few artistic directors of color in the country heading up a theater that isn’t geared toward race- or ethnic-specific work. Those numbers have increased in recent years, with high-profile theaters such as Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Long Wharf Theatre in in New Haven, Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C., Baltimore Center Stage, and Repertory Theatre of St. Louis all hiring new artistic directors who are either Black or Latinx—a development noted in the March petition.
