Scoundrels' O'Brien Extends Contract at The Old Globe; Patch Named Resident A.D. | Playbill

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News Scoundrels' O'Brien Extends Contract at The Old Globe; Patch Named Resident A.D. Busy director Jack O'Brien — whose Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is currently playing on Broadway — has announced that Jerry Patch will take on a new "resident artistic director" position at The Old Globe in San Diego.
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Jack O'Brien

Currently the dramaturg and member of the artistic team at South Coast Repertory in California, Patch will assume his full-time duties — which include working with Old Globe guest directors, playwrights and designers and managing the artistic staff in the casting and literary areas — on June 1. He will also help artistic director O'Brien and executive director Louis G. Spisto with planning the annual season.

O’Brien noted, in a release that Patch is "perhaps the most adroit and experienced dramaturgical presence in the landscape that has encouraged more of the best playwrights of our time than perhaps anyone else. His even-tempered objectivity has provided the security writers need so desperately to take the creative leap into the unknown. He renews with his presence our conviction that, alongside the classical lines we have protected so fervently over the last 70 years of our existence, the clarion voices of new writers need to be heard, encouraged, and given a home.”

The Tony Award-winning director of Hairspray and Henry IV will not leave his post at the San Diego stage, confirming this with his contract extension through the 2007-2008 season.

"Since the current onslaught of activity makes it impossible for me to stay continually in residence in San Diego, and since it is equally impossible for me to believe I am no longer of use to this theatre or this community," stated O'Brien, "I welcome the chance to extend my personal contract and my commitment to this theatre while finding the best way to share the day-to-day chores and business solutions with Lou Spisto, our Executive Director, and with Jerry Patch, our new Resident Artistic Director. My loyalty is in place. My leash is simply longer. And my gratitude for both is boundless."

In addition to the current Broadway run of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels — which debuted at his homestage — director O'Brien is attached to a number of future projects including the Tom Stoppard trilogy The Coast of Utopia, the forthcoming film version of Hairspray and a Metropolitan Opera staging of Puccini's Il trittico. Past productions have included Imaginary Friends, The Full Monty, The Invention of Love, The Seagull, Damn Yankees, Porgy and Bess and Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

During his time at SCR, Patch has served as dramaturg on works including Donald Margulies' Sight Unseen and Brooklyn Boy, Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, Howard Corder's Search and Destroy, Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon, as well as the world premiere of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain and the upcoming A Naked Girl on the Appian Way. He also served as artistic director (1990-1997) of The Sundance Theatre Program and a consulting dramaturg for New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company.

 
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