Pittsburgh Public Theater artistic director Marya Sea Kaminski leaving at end of season

Pittsburgh Public Theater artistic director Marya Sea Kaminski will be departing her role with the company effective July 2025.

Kaminski has been with Pittsburgh Public Theater since the departure of Ted Pappas in 2018, and she will remain in her role until the end of the company’s 50th anniversary season through three more productions, “Trouble in Mind,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Public Works’ “Twelfth Night.”

“When I was invited here almost seven years ago, I was not looking for a job. I had no intention of moving to Pittsburgh,” Kaminski said. “And then I was invited to apply, and then I was invited out here, and I stepped foot in the Cultural District. I walked over the Allegheny River and saw the O’Reilly (Theater) and I was smitten. I feel like I was called here.”

She has been reflecting on the first 50 years of Pittsburgh Public Theater and the artistic directors who came before her as she prepares to enter the next phase of her career.

“It’s mostly sweet. It doesn’t feel bitter. I have had such a great time, and I work with amazing people. I’m programming one more season. … It’s so fun to program a season, it’s been so fun. It feels good, I feel really proud and grateful,” she said.

While Kaminski isn’t sure what her exact next steps will be, she’s excited for new possibilities. “I think this is the right time for me to open up to new opportunities,” she said.

Growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Kaminski fell in love with theater thanks to the city’s Geva Theatre Center.

“Geva is where I saw in the same season — I think this was sixth or seventh grade — ‘Anything Goes’ and ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ That was it. It was magic, it was so moving,” she said. “That was a moment that totally changed me. I think places like the Public and Geva provide that for a lot of people.”

Kamniski helmed the company through the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic, and under her watch, Pittsburgh Public Theater saw a 400% increase in onstage diverse representation and more than 800 new subscriber households. She produced five world premieres during her seasons with PPT.

“I feel like we have been uniquely poised to turn challenges into opportunities,” she said. “While the pandemic was so tragic and was a true crisis in so many ways, I do feel like it coalesced our community in the way we established a digital presence — we kept working with artists, we connected to audiences. That really buoyed me through the pandemic and honestly was a crucible in some ways to really walk the walk of what it is to be a true public theater.”

She also focused on creating partnerships and investment into the arts in Pittsburgh, works that she intends to continue — and prioritize — after leaving Pittsburgh Public Theater. She hopes that investment will be her legacy at PPT. The investment initiatives have included a robust Resident Artist program, the Public Playwrights Collective and others.

“I really feel like I have done what I’ve come here to do and set up the Public to launch into the next 50 years. In the course of catalyzing so much change at the Public, I have also been changed,” she said. “I feel like I am a more vibrant artist, I feel like I’m a clearer leader. In the same way that I was called here seven years ago, I am being called back to make my own work. I want to be able to have a more personal and more expansive artistic practice and sort of cast a vision beyond the scope of the mission of the Public, and I want to invest in the next generation.

“I think that we are facing so much urgency in our world, in our country, in a million different ways. It’s been such an honor and a pleasure to be able to contribute, but I have no illusions that it is going to be the next generation of innovators and artists and leaders who are going to take these changes and make them into true transformation in our field, and I want to be a part of that.”

She plans to stay in Pittsburgh. “It’s my home, I love it here. It’s an amazing place to make work.”

Before saying farewell, Kaminski will direct the Public Works production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” — the grand finale of PPT’s 50th anniversary season — which will run June 27-29.

The board of trustees at the company will be launching a nationwide search to find their next artistic director this month, in partnership with Management Consultants for the Arts.

“The board of trustees wishes to thank Marya for her transformational leadership over the past seven years. Her tenure spanned seismic shifts in American theater, underscored by the covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Marya led the theater through these extraordinary circumstances with grace, passion and enthusiasm, driving the theater’s vision with innovative and groundbreaking productions,” Pittsburgh Public Theater board of trustees chair Bal Srinivasan said in a release. “There is no doubt her imprint on this company will live on well beyond her tenure. We wish Marya the best and deeply appreciate all that she has meant to the Pittsburgh artistic community. We look forward to continuing our work with her through the remainder of this season.”

“There’s no perfect time, but I do feel the Public is in an amazing spot right now,” Kaminski said. “I believe that every great city deserves a great public theater, and I feel like that’s the role we play. My hope is that the Public can continue to evolve as Pittsburgh grows and expands, to reflect this city back to its audiences, back to its artists and be an inspiring home for stories here.”