She will continue her involvement with the company as chair of its Artistic Cabinet and has been nominated to the board of trustees.

"Daniella's contribution as artist, manager and strategic thinker has been invaluable to our identity and growth. This shift deepens her commitment to the Lark while supporting the natural evolution of her blossoming directing career, and we are all excited about what lies ahead," stated co-founder and producing director John Clinton Eisner.

Topol is currently directing Epic Theatre Ensemble's production of Palace at the End by Judith Thompson (2008 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winner) and recently directed Trista Baldwin's Sand at Women's Project, and Sheila Callaghan's Dead City at New Georges, both of which were developed at the Lark.

Topol has assumed many roles during her seven-year tenure, first as a director and then as managing director prior to creating her current leadership position where she has overseen all artistic programs. Some of her many accomplishments include launching, with Sandi Goff Farkas, the groundbreaking Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, "establishing innovative programs to sustain ongoing artistic support of the company's growing pool of writers, and forging strategic relationships with theatres and other organizations in the U.S. and abroad."

She has developed collaborations with partners like Center Theatre Group, Fordham University, HotINK, LMDA, the Magic Theater, NAMT, New York Stage and Film, the Public Theater, Queens Theater in the Park and Women's Project. "These have played a critical role in advancing the Lark's mission of bringing unheard voices to broad-based audiences at multiple venues," according to the Lark.

Topol said in a statement, "The Lark is a powerful seedbed of new writers and new plays that has shaped the way I think theatre should and can be created. I am excited about my new role and am honored to have the opportunity to continue to shape the future of a company that is so important to me and the theatre community."

The company is launching a national search to fill this executive-level position. Information on the position can be found at www.larktheatre.org/getinvolved/jobs.htm.

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A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the Lark Play Development Center "provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally."