Everyman Theatre Founder Vincent Lancisi Steps Down

Vincent Lancisi, Founding Artistic Director of Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, Md, and executive at the professional equity theatre company since 1990, has announced plans to retire in June 2026 at the end of the organization’s 2025/2026 season – the theatre’s 35th Anniversary year.

During his tenure, Lancisi has overseen the productions of over 180 plays on the Everyman stage and personally directed 58 of them. Lancisi is credited not only with establishing Everyman Theatre as one of the premier arts institutions in Baltimore, providing work for theatre professionals from across the nation, but in growing the acclaimed arts organization into a $6M annual operation that attracts over 30,000 visits by theatergoing audiences every year. He is admired for his commitment to creating a space that celebrates the actor and for maintaining a Resident Company of artists – an ensemble of professional actors and designers that work together every year – from the very beginning.

“Vinny and his team have not only built a world-class theatre in one of the most vibrant arts cities in the nation but have done so with an unrelenting commitment to creating meaningful connections with the community,” says Bryan Rakes, President of Everyman Theatre’s Board of Directors. “Thanks to Vinny, Everyman has made an indelible impact on the lives of so many Baltimoreans.”

In addition to serving at the helm of the artistic team for more than three decades, Lancisi has also been involved in the hiring of many of the current senior leaders in the organization, including Managing Director Marissa LaRose, who has co-led the organization with Lancisi since 2020. LaRose, along with a senior leadership team consisting of many long-tenured production staff members, will remain at Everyman following Lancisi’s departure to ensure consistent operations as the national search for a new Artistic Director begins later this year. (Management Consultants for the Arts (MCA) will lead the search.)

“Vinny’s commitment to artistic excellence of the highest quality through creating an artistic home for our Resident Company is both rare and admirable. He has built a thriving organization grounded in authenticity and meaningful connection,” says LaRose. “I am exceedingly proud to have partnered with his visionary leadership for the past five years and am confident we are poised for a bright future thanks to the foundation he has built.”

“Everyman Theatre has grown from a vision and a dream in my head to a major regional theatre with a highly respected Resident Company of artists,” says Lancisi. “I am confident I can step down and retire with great pride at what we’ve achieved and excitement for Everyman’s promising future.”

An unwavering champion of the notion that theatre must be affordable and accessible for everyone, Lancisi always worked to ensure – through allocation of donations, grants, sponsorships, scholarships to every onsite education program, and discount pricing – that Everyman could keep its performances and education programs accessible. Additionally, he has been a strong advocate for the organization’s Pay-What-You-Choose program, which allocates over 4,500 seats each year, some to every performance, for the price-sensitive theatregoer to purchase at an amount of their choosing.

Lancisi was also instrumental in launching Everyman Education, a division of the theatre that provides programming designed to foster artists of all ages through art onstage, in the classroom, and in community-based learning opportunities. These education programs, including the signature High School Matinee Program, celebrating its 28th year, serve over 3,000 students annually in the Baltimore area and continue to expand.

In addition to his work at Everyman, Lancisi is also recognized as a community leader and advocate for the arts in the city of Baltimore. He has taught acting and directing at Towson University, the University of Maryland, Catholic University, and Howard Community College; he is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers; and served many years on the Boards for the Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment District in Baltimore as well as the Market Center Merchants Association.

Everyman Theatre’s History and Growth under Lancisi
Everyman Theatre’s journey of delivering “Great Stories, Well Told” began with its first production – The Runner Stumbles – in the winter of 1990 at Saint John’s Church in Charles Village Baltimore. The production starred a young actor named Kyle Prue in one of his earliest roles. Prue immediately joined Lancisi in the company that same inaugural year and is presently Everyman’s longest tenured executive, currently serving as Production Director in addition to roles onstage.

For the next four years, Everyman Theatre’s meager budget only allowed them to produce one production per year at various locations in the city, including Vagabond’s Theatre, the Theatre Project, and at the MICA campus. In 1994, Lancisi found a dedicated space for Everyman when it moved into 1727 North Charles Street, which would become the Theatre’s home for 18 years as the organization began to gain prominence in the Baltimore theatre scene.

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, subscription numbers grew and a string of popular and acclaimed productions, including Amadeus, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Lion in Winter, The Glass Menagerie, The Crucible, and the wildly successful Proof, proved Everyman had found an audience. In January 2013, the Theatre expanded with a move to its current downtown home on 315 West Fayette Street. The first production in the new space was a record-setting production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, August: Osage County, (also directed by Lancisi.)

The first year that full-season subscription packages were offered was 1996 and generated a total of 325 sales. Now there are thousands of subscriptions sold every year.

Throughout this significant growth over the years, Everyman has always maintained its core values of people, community, and excellence, producing professional theatre of the highest artistic standards. Everyman has been steadfast in its commitment to creating productions of the highest artistic quality with a local team of artists and artisans and to providing theatre that is affordable and accessible to everyone, just as Lancisi intended from the first day he welcomed patrons in the door, ensuring it embodies the promise of its name, Everyman Theatre.

Additional history and full production timeline available at everymantheatre.org/mission-history/.

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