Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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96 | APRIL 2015 nshoremag.com BY KILEY JACQUES Artistic director Sean Daniels brings new life to a middle-aged stage. Dad's Garage might seem an unlikely name for a theatre company, until one of its cofounders is revealed to be director Sean Daniels, who, at the time of its inception, was 22 years old, flying by the seat of his pants and holding fast to fraying purse strings. That was nearly 20 Fresh Face in-depth years ago. The money never ran out, and the show still goes on. An accomplished director and creator of new works, Daniels was recently appointed Merrimack Repertory Theatre's (MRT) new artistic director. Named by Ameri- can Theatre magazine as "one of the photographs by Meghan Moore FACES MRT Artistic Director Sean Daniels page 96 FACES T. S. Eliot Summerhouse page 106 LIVE Stoneham Theatre page 120 LIVE Andover's H. Winthrop Peirce page 126 SHOP Sarah Elizabeth Shop page 134 IN THIS ISSUE: Sean Daniels is taking over the reins of artistic director at Merrimack Repertory Theatre. top 15 up-and-coming artists in the United States, whose work will be transforming America's stages for decades to come," Daniels brings to MRT's stage a trove of ideas, a cache of connections, and an enthu- siasm impossible to contain. His most recent credits include a stint as artist-at-large at the Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York; four years as associate artistic director at the Tony Award-winning Actors Theatre of Louisville, where he directed 17 productions includ- ing five Humana Festivals; and time as associate artistic director and resident director of the California Shakespeare Theater, where he was in charge of all the young audience programs (while there, he quadru- pled the number of young people attending the theatre). The secret to his success? Excel- lent audience engagement. "People always want to see themselves on stage," notes Daniels, who started staging plays written and acted by people in their 20s at Dad's Garage. At work was his notion that if you want people to come see your shows, you need to speak their lan- guage, or teach them yours. Imperative to Daniels's objec- tive as a director is this idea of how to engage not just the audience but also the community at large, particularly on behalf of a larger institution like MRT. While at the Geva Theatre, he conceived and implemented the Co- hort Club—a group of 20 Rochester residents of various ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds who were granted access to the entire creative process. Participants went