Court Theatre’s Charles Newell departing Hyde Park theater after ‘impressive’ run

“I’m kind of a restless guy,” says Charles Newell.

He’s very sincere, even serious, when he says it, but in context, the comment has an amusing quality. After all, the interview marks the occasion of his departure from his role as artistic director of the Court Theater.

After 30 years.

Staying in any job that long wouldn’t usually be considered evidence of restlessness.

What he’s really saying, though, is that his restlessness — mental, not physical — seems to be what’s kept the job fresh for him all this time. Newell set and achieved new goals. The University of Chicago in Hyde Park, where the theater is in residence, supported him for doing so, even moving his salary from the budget of the theater to the provost’s office. And that sense of security enabled him to test boundaries even further.

For the Court, and for Newell, it’s been a virtuous cycle.

In his three decades at the helm, Newell has taken the theater to a series of heights, marked by an impressive number of Jeff Awards, the attraction of extraordinary, diverse talent both from Chicago and beyond, an expansion into musicals and world premieres, growth in audiences and engagement with its local South Side community, and, in 2022, the Tony Award for Regional Theater, the singular honor of its kind. That distinction puts it among the ranks of the Goodman, Steppenwolf, and Chicago Shakespeare theaters, although, with a single theater of only 250 seats, the Court has a fraction of their budgets.

Along the way, Newell has developed his own voice as a type of servant-director and servant-leader.

In July, Newell, 65, will transition to a new, one-year role as senior artistic consultant. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll soon be helping a new leader settle into the job. The search has been ongoing, with the final decision up to Katherine Baiker, the university’s Provost.

According to a source, the search committee is inviting three finalists to visit the campus soon, although even if an offer is extended, it may be some time before a selected candidate can begin, depending on any pre-existing commitments. Newell, meanwhile, will ensure his successor has a runway of programming rather than be met with intense timelines for creating new contracts and schedules.

Newell joined the theater in 1993 as the associate artistic director and a year later took over the theater’s leadership from Nicholas Rudall, a university classics scholar who had founded the professional theater almost as an extension of his academic work.

In the 12 years between graduating from Wesleyan University and arriving at the Court, Newell had established himself as a director of classics — “I became known as the Shakespeare guy,” he says — after assistant directing for an extraordinary who’s who of now-legendary names in American regional theater: John Houseman, JoAnne Akalaitas, Alan Schneider, Garland Wright, Liviu Culei, Lucian Pintille, Michael Kahn and Mark Lamos.

“I learned by being in the room,” he says.

He was ready to nest, both because he and his wife, Kate, were starting a family, and because he wanted to be part of a community.

“I wanted to do theater because I wanted to be part of something and work together with a group of people.”

His first Court production, “Triumph of Love,” a French, 18th century comedy, won the theater’s first Jeff Award for best production, an acclaim that undoubtedly helped cement him as Rudall’s successor.

The first show he directed after becoming the theater’s leader he calls a “Not very good production of Moss Hart’s ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ And I think everybody went, ‘Oh, my God, what did we do?”

Newell is very conscious of what makes the Court unique in the extensive Chicago theatrical ecosystem, and he has clearly thought long and hard about those special qualities, nurturing their possibilities.

First, it’s part of a major university. Newell makes a statement in the form of a question: “Some of the magic of this place is: How does the study and creation of knowledge intertwine with the creation of theatrical art, and how can those two things feed each other in a most powerful way?”

He references the academic programming that has accompanied some of his many productions of ancient Greek plays — probably more than any other theater in the country — as well as for the current “Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution.”

The Court also defines itself as a classics-based theater, but Newell set out to expand what that could mean. First, he did it through casting and bold interpretations. One of his favorite productions was JoAnne Akalaitas’s “Life Is a Dream” in which characters, dressed in 17th-century costumes, drank from Diet Coke cans, “Because,” Newell says with a bit of glee, “[JoAnne] said ‘that’s what powerful people do at meetings.’”

Even more transformational was the choice of works.

“I wanted to bring in musicals because they’re one of the great American classic art forms, and are often based in great classic texts. There was quite a stir-up about, ‘What do you mean the Court’s gonna do musicals?’”

Among treasured memories, “I have to say one is having Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori come and see our production of ‘Caroline or Change’ and just being over the moon about it, with the central performance of E. Faye Butler.”

That 2008 production, as well as the 2005 production of “Man of La Mancha,” won a slew of Jeff Awards, and musicals have become a regular, and accepted, part of the theater’s offerings.

And, perhaps what makes Court most unique is its location on the South Side, in a city where institutional theaters have chased audiences north and west into the suburbs. In other words, to predominantly white areas.

Early on, Newell committed himself to diversifying the artists who appeared on stage, casting, for example, Allen Gilmore as Cyrano and Byron Stewart in the “Barber of Seville.“

“This was an effort to bring artists of color into the work,” he says. “But it was only when I went to go see Ron OJ Parsons’ production of ‘Fences’ here in Chicago, did I think, ‘No, Charlie, you need what you can’t do with Black stories. You need an authentic, unique, singular artist to do something that you can’t do.’” Parsons became the theater’s resident director, and has been so for 18 years. “He’s part of the fabric,” Newell says.

Newell combined these goals, to diversify the audience, expand the notion of a classic, and push the boundaries of the theater’s capacity by commissioning new stage works, including “The Invisible Man,” “Native Son” and now “Stokely” by Nambi E. Kelley, and “The Adventures of Augie March” by Pulitzer-winner David Auburn. Next Spring, Newell will direct “Berlin,” an adaptation of a graphic novel commissioned from local playwright Mickle Maher, who also teaches in the university’s Theater and Performance Studies program.

All of this progress is a testament to Newell’s leadership, a skill that he’s gradually embraced as a key part of his identity, including building leadership development programs with the university’s Office of Civic Engagement, which he hopes to continue. It emerged from his own development. Over time, as he explored what made him unique as a director and a person, Newell shed some of his influences from the auteur directors he learned from and embraced a different approach.

“As an artistic leader of a project,” he says,” I bring my personal responses, but the most important thing for me was how do I serve the other artists – designers, actors, everyone involved in making the work — to support them to be their most powerful, authentic, and genuine self.”

“And it’s a very different role as a director,” he explains. “It’s about creating that kind of space where everyone feels like they’re able to do their best work in this environment.”

This approach is evident whenever you talk to others about Newell.

“I’ve never seen a leader who places such a premium on partnership as Charlie does,” says Ysaguirre, the theater’s executive director. “He’s had a few collaborators for decades,” he continues, including Parsons, designer John Culbert, and actor Timothy Edward Kane as examples. “He really trusts them.”

And Ysaguirre insists he’s received an abundance of encouragement as he continues the work of building bridges with the theater’s Hyde Park neighborhood and beyond, forming a Community Engagement Division.

“Charlie is the consummate collaborator,” says Kelvin Roston Jr., who has acted in several of Newell’s productions, including “Porgy and Bess” and “Othello.” “He has a vision,” Roston explains, “but he believes that what comes from the actor is what will be most believable to an audience.”

According to Roston, who like Newell grew up in a family of pastors and is most attracted to classic work, “Charlie helped me break through the glass ceiling of myself. Sometimes, our training gets in the way.”

For Newell, the Court’s success, and likely his departure, all comes back to restlessness, to trying to get more from others and from himself.

“It’s the kind of restlessness of what’s next, what’s the next ambition, where are we going? How do we break open what we have been doing and not just, frankly, imitate what we’ve done? What’s the next challenge we need to undertake?”