Rick Dildine joins SFSTL

Rick Dildine, formerly Managing Director of About Face Theater in Chicago, has joined Shakespeare Festival St. Louis as our new Executive Director, following a nationwide search by the Board of Directors. Rick and Luke the Dog arrived and began work September 21. It has been a busy fall as Rick zips around town meeting board members, donors, actors, technical staff, and others. “I see a tremendous opportunity with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis to create a destination for theatergoers throughout the Midwest, and I am excited to join the team!” he said.

Rick comes to the Festival with a solid foundation of theatrical management, and with acting and directing experience as well. He spent seven years with the Stephen Foster Theatre in Kentucky, working his way up from Production Manager to Artistic Director, a position he held for four years, until 2008. During that time, he also produced the Brown University/Trinity Rep New Plays Festival and was the Playwriting Coordinator for the graduate playwriting program at Brown University.

Rick’s production and directing credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, My Fair Lady, Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, among others, at the Warehouse Theatre in South Carolina. He has received the National Directing Fellowship from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and he served on the Arts & Cultural Advisory Council for the recent Chicago bid for the Olympics.

“We conducted a nationwide search for the best person to lead the Festival into its second decade. A number of outstanding candidates emerged, but Rick’s leadership, experience, enthusiasm and engaging personality made him a clear choice. We are excited to bring him to St. Louis, and we look forward to a long and rewarding association with him,” said Mont Levy, Board Chairman. We are happy to have Rick at the head of our Festival Family and hope you will join us in welcoming Rick and his dog Luke, a rescued greyhound he has adopted who spends his days in the office, to St. Louis and Shakespeare Glen!

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