Cutting Ball Theater Announces New Managing Director

After an extensive nation-wide search, San Francisco's cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater announced today the appointment of Suzanne Appel as Managing Director of The Cutting Ball Theater; Appel will be Cutting Ball's first Managing Director. Appel joins Cutting Ball directly from the East Coast, where she recently completed her dual MBA / MFA in theater management from Yale's schools of Drama and Management. Before attending Yale, she was the Director of Individual Giving at Dance Theater Workshop and the Assistant Director of the Wesleyan Annual Fund at Wesleyan University. Appel's official start date at Cutting Ball will be June 1.

Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose says, "We are absolutely thrilled to have Suzanne join Cutting Ball's team. Her impressive training and accomplishments would make her a fantastic Managing Director of any organization. What hooked me was her deep passion for and knowledge of experimental theater. She is full of energy and ideas and those ideas are all right in line with the art and culture we have created at Cutting Ball these past 11 years. Suzanne is just the right person to help guide Cutting Ball to a future as one of San Francisco's most vibrant and visible arts organizations." Continues Melrose, "Many people are shocked when they learn that we have existed for 11 years without a managing director. When you consider what we have accomplished without one, just think of what we are going to be able to do with one. Expect big things from us in the coming years!"

"When I first met Rob Melrose last summer at a conference, I knew immediately I had stumbled upon someone with a very rare talent in the theater world," says incoming Managing Director Suzanne Appel. "Rob is unafraid to take big artistic risks, but is so thoughtful that he very naturally brings us all along on the journey of his big ideas. This mix of careful planning and smart, gutsy artistry is true on every level of The Cutting Ball Theater. I jumped at the chance to join this company that was already doing so much that was right without the assistance of a managing director." Continues Appel, "Cutting Ball is a company well poised to really take off, and I am delighted and honored to have the opportunity to work with the talented theater professionals and administrative staff who have made Cutting Ball such a well-regarded part of the Bay Area arts scene. I look forward to helping this extraordinary company continue to evolve and produce the great mix of avant garde classics and experimental new works for which they have come to be known for many seasons to come."

Co-founded in 1999 by theater artists Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers, Cutting Ball Theater presents avant-garde works of the past, present, and future by re-envisioning classics, exploring seminal avant-garde texts, and developing new experimental plays. Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, the Magic Theatre, and Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works. The company has produced a number of World Premieres, West Coast Premieres, and re-imagined various classics. Voted "Best Theater Company" in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of The Bay issue, Cutting Ball Theater also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 from SF Weekly, was selected by San Francisco Magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007, and received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010 issue of American Theatre Magazine and the company's production of Marcus Gardley's ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi recently won three Bay Area Theater Critics Circle awards.

For more information about Cutting Ball Theater, or for tickets to upcoming productions, the public can visit cuttingball.com or call 800-838-3006