Working Theater Producing Artistic Director Laura Carbonell Monarque to Depart Organization

Drama Desk and AUDELCO award-winning off-Broadway company Working Theater has announced that Producing Artistic Director Laura Carbonell Monarque will depart the organization after 20 years, the final two of which she has served in her current role.

Monarque will join the Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara as their new Director of Development beginning July 1.

Working Theater will immediately launch a national search to find the organization's next administrative and artistic leaders, who will make up the new shared leadership structure. Working Theater's Board of Directors has formed a search committee who will select the new leadership with input from key organizational stakeholders including artists, funders, and community members. The full job descriptions are available at: www.theworkingtheater.org/work-with-us.

On behalf of Working Theater's Board and Search Committee, Robert Arcaro (Board Member, Founding Member, and former Artistic Director) stated, "We are grateful to Laura's long years of service in the company, and honored to have grown alongside her as she navigated us through a time of transition, embracing Working Theater's mission, and continuing to find new ways to serve working New Yorkers through the arts. We wish her all the best in this new chapter."

Monarque's tenure at Working Theater began with an internship in 2003 under the guidance of long-time leader Mark Plesent. She was named Managing Director in 2010. As Producing Artistic Director, Monarque launched several new artistic partnerships, reinvigorated community partnerships as the industry continued to emerge and recover from the pandemic, and established a new collaborative staff structure to best support the organization as it prepares to introduce a new shared leadership approach. She instituted the Company's first open-access Theaterworks! class, enabling anyone who identifies as a working person to access the program, regardless of union affiliation, and oversaw the first 3 years of the Company's newest program, the Mark Plesent Commission Fund, established in honor of Working Theater's late artistic director, which supports new playwrights who identify as working people. She solidified the incorporation of the Company's radically accessible Sliding Scale Ticketing Initiative for all programming and producing partnerships. She also oversaw fundraising and pandemic recovery efforts that further stabilized the Company's financial position, doubling the Operating Reserve Fund to $100,000 in 2022 as the annual operating budget increased to approximately $600,000. Monarque will complete her tenure by curating Working Theater's 39th Season in 2023-2024, which will kick off with workshops of two new plays developed through the Mark Plesent Commission Fund. Full season programming will be announced in the coming months.

Monarque affirmed, "I am excited to help usher in a new, shared model of leadership that will enable further growth for the organization as we endeavor to represent and serve a diverse constituency of working New Yorkers."

New leadership will be supported by a team of core management staff that includes Business Manager Kylee Brinkman, Marketing & Media Manager Coryn Carson, and Program Manager Sanam Hashemi.

WORKING THEATER believes the transformative experience of live theater should not be a luxury, but a part of everyone's everyday life. The Company offers artistic and educational programming for and about working people- Americans working in the industrial and service economies, who may be unable to afford commercial theater or feel that it does not resonate with their lives and experience.Toward that goal, Working Theater offers an accessible sliding-scale ticket pricing model, and tells stories that reflect a diverse population of the working majority, in hopes of uniting us in our common humanity.

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