Walnut Creek’s Center Rep stage company has first new director in 3 years

Center Repertory Company, Walnut Creek’s longtime professional theater troupe, announced Wednesday it has selected a new artistic director with a reputation for championing diversity and LGBTQ+ issues on and off the stage.

Matt M. Morrow, who most recently had been executive artistic director at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, the third oldest LGBTQIA+ theatre in the nation, will start part-time at Center Rep later this month, working with acting artistic director Markus Potter. He’ll assume full-time duties at Center Rep, which operates out of the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, in August.

“We are thrilled to welcome Matt as the next artistic leader of Center Rep and a member of the Lesher Center leadership team,” said Carolyn Jackson, general manager of the Lesher Center and managing director of Center
Rep. “Matt brings a fresh vision for balancing much-loved traditional works alongside new voices, a wealth of experience in fundraising and organizational leadership, and a track record of meaningful actions to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at theatre companies.”

“His genuine warmth, caring, and passion for serving the community shines through and we can’t wait for the Bay Area to get to know Matt,” Jackson added.

Morrow spent eight years at Diversionary Theatre, where he presented such world premieres as Miranda Rose Hall’s “The House of Great Mercy,” garnered several production awards and was said to have spearheaded a campaign to de-gender theatrical awards by the local critic’s circle.

Before that, Morrow was associate artistic director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he specialized in producing new works. He also spent 20 years working in New York for such companies as Amas Musical
Theatre, said to be the country’s first company devoted to non-traditional, multi-ethnic casting, as well as Playwrights Horizons, Cherry
Lane Theatre, and PlayCo.

“I’m honored and overjoyed to be joining the incredible Center Rep family and the East Bay community,” Morrow said in a statement. “My goal as a theater-maker is to bolster a diverse family of artists and arts lovers through the
programming of ambitious work that entertains and provokes in equal measures.”

Center Rep, one of the nation’s few city-owned-and-run stage companies, has been without a fulltime artistic director since it laid off Michael Butler during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020. It’s next production, the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights,” opens May 27.