Laguna Playhouse leader ready to step down

When Karen Wood took the helm eight years ago at the Laguna Playhouse, she brought with her a motto — one that evoked dialogue from the movie “Apollo 13” more than any stage production.

“We had a little mantra during our hardest years — ‘No theater goes down on our watch,’” Wood said Wednesday. “That’s not going to happen. Because art matters too much to a community.”

Wood, who became the theater’s managing director in 2008 and later took the title of executive director, started her new position as the Great Recession loomed, and she concerned herself with the checkbook as much as the playbill. So now, as she prepares to step down early this year, the Artesia native counts landing the theater in the black among her proudest accomplishments.

Under Wood’s leadership, the playhouse expanded its board of directors and spotlighted other arts organizations, offering its stage to groups such as Laguna Beach Live! and the Laguna Dance Festival. The theater brought in Hollywood names, such as Val Kilmer, whose one-man play “Citizen Twain” ran at the theater in 2013, and Leslie Caron, who starred in the musical “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” the year after.

Joe Hanauer, the co-chairman of the playhouse’s board of trustees, said Wood was not the first to open the theater to outside groups or to lure marquee performers to town.

However, he credited her — and her team, which included artistic director Ann Wareham — for ramping up both efforts, particularly at a time when every dollar counted.

“During a time that live theater was threatened by a number of things, not the least of which was the Great Recession, but also changing tastes and preferences in the public, the playhouse really was able to withstand those challenges, and it’s positioned very well for the future,” Hanauer said. “When you’re the CEO of an organization, you take credit for the good things and responsibility for the negative, and there were a bunch more good.”

Wood had served as managing director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre for seven years before taking her post with the Laguna Playhouse in early 2008. She had also held high-ranking positions with the Music Center’s education division, John Anson Ford Theatre and Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group, all Los Angeles-based organizations.

In Laguna, Wood replaced Richard Stein, who had quit as executive director in June 2007 after 17 years with the playhouse. Soon after her appointment, the playhouse launched an Advancement Campaign to strengthen and rehabilitate the theater. To support that campaign, the playhouse sold an adjoining property at 580 Broadway that it had purchased in 1998 for a planned expansion.

That willingness to make difficult decisions helped endear Wood to Sian Poeschl, the city’s cultural arts manager.

“When Karen first took the position, the playhouse was in a situation where it really, in order for it to survive, needed some tough choices, and Karen, with the board, made those tough choices and made sure that we still have a Laguna Playhouse,” Poeschl said. “We have to be really appreciative of all the hard work she’s done.”

Perhaps more than any other city in Orange County, Laguna Beach has a reputation as an arts haven. The city hosts three major summer art festivals — the Festival of Arts, Art-A-Fair and the Sawdust Art Festival — and features a packed lineup of galleries along the beach on Pacific Coast Highway. The annual Pageant of the Masters, which re-creates paintings and photographs with live models onstage, lures crowds every summer.

In a city with so many arts institutions, the Laguna Playhouse is among the oldest. The theater dates to 1920, and its website notes the staff’s “responsibility to be good stewards” of the cultural tradition it inherited.

Mayor Pro Tem Toni Iseman, who has appeared at the playhouse as part of the annual “Lagunatics” revue comedy show, praised Wood for helping to keep that tradition alive.

“She did a lot of creative things to invigorate the playhouse,” Iseman said. “She opened the playhouse to invite other venues in. She brought in some first-class, legendary stars. And she worked endlessly to make our playhouse vibrant.”

Wood said she does not have a next step planned but is in talks with other theater companies and also working on a “family musical,” which she hopes to stage in New York. The playhouse will hold a nationwide search for a replacement, with Wood’s contract set to expire the first week of February. She and Hanauer noted, however, that she may stay longer to help the theater through the change.

“Transition is always a moment of opportunity,” Wood said. “So it will be an opportunity not only for the playhouse, but also an opportunity for me.”