About ATC
Leadership Bios
DAVID IRA GOLDSTEIN
Artistic DirectorMr. Goldstein this year celebrates his twentieth season as Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Company. In those two decades, he has produced over 175 mainstage plays, workshops and presentations including acclaimed appearances by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and the Theatre Royal Bath. He has directed over 35 mainstage productions for ATC ranging from classics to new plays to musicals, including The Kite Runner, Hair, The Pajama Game, Much Ado about Nothing, My Fair Lady, Valley Song, The Illusion, Side Man, [title of show], How I Learned to Drive, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Scapin, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Boys Next Door, Shadowlands, The Pirates of Penzance, H.M. S. Pinafore and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as many world premieres including Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, Inventing van Gogh, Rocket Man, Private Eyes, Over The Moon and Dracula by Steven Dietz, and Ten Chimneys and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Jeffrey Hatcher. This season at ATC, he will direct the world premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club. He received the 2010 Leader of the Year Award in Arts and Humanities from the Capitol Times and the 2003 Governor’s Arts Award as Individual Artist for his contributions to the arts in Arizona.
He has been a guest director at theatres all across the country including The Pasadena Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Florida Stage, Center Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Northlight Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Geva Theatre Center, Laguna Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Mixed Blood Theatre, The Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Illusion Theatre and Village Theatre. Last year, he directed The Pirates of Penzance for Arizona Opera. His musical A Marvelous Party: The Noël Coward Celebration, which originated at ATC, has played extensively across the US, winning many awards including four Jeff Awards in Chicago (including Best Director), the Elliot Norton Award in Boston and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Production.
Before coming to Arizona, Mr. Goldstein was Associate Artistic Director of ACT Theatre in Seattle. His many productions there included Glengarry Glen Ross, Hapgood, the world premieres of God’s Country by Steven Dietz and Willi by John Pielmeier, as well as a joint Soviet-American production of The Falcon. He was Associate Artistic Director at Actors Theatre of St. Paul from 1983-86. Mr. Goldstein holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. He has been a visiting instructor and director at ASU, University of Washington, University of Minnesota and University of Northern Iowa. He has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Theatre Communications Group, Arts Midwest, and the Arizona, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington State Arts Commissions. Mr. Goldstein is a proud member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and Actors’ Equity Association. He is married to KJZZ radio announcer Michele Robins. They share their home with their dog and cats: Rio, Cary, Reggie, and Dexter.
MARK COLE
Managing DirectorMark Cole holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre from Auburn University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting from the University of Minnesota. After two years of performing in Manhattan, Cole began his corporate career in New York working at E.F. Hutton as a Manager of Word Processing, Barclays Bank as Manager of Special Projects implementing Barclay's first electronic mail network, and Wang Laboratories as a Marketing Manager selling Wang integrated imaging systems. Cole then returned to the theatre working as a Stage Manager on the Broadway production of Cats, the National Tour of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the Off-Broadway productions of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged, Picasso at The Lapin Agile, New York Rock and many others. He joined Miami City Ballet in 1998 as Production Director and assumed the role of General Manager in 2006. Miami City Ballet is a $15M company of 50 dancers and 55 staff which performs four programs and The Nutcracker in four South Florida Counties, as well as touring nationally and internationally. Founding Artistic Director Edward Villella is considered the finest ballet dancer ever produced in America and George Balanchine created several roles for him in major masterworks performed around the world today. Under Edward Villella's artistic direction, Miami City Ballet has become known as the preeminent interpreter of the Balanchine Repertoire. As Edward Villella's business partner, Cole was responsible for leading the day-to-day operations of Miami City Ballet; has served as the face of the ballet in four South Florida counties, stewarding a multi-county board of trustees; and has led successful annual fundraising campaigns of $5.5 - $6.7M. He formerly sat on the City of Miami Beach's Collins Park Cultural Oversight Committee and was a board member of the Collins Park Neighborhood Association.
STEPHEN WRENTMORE
Associate Artistic DirectorStephen Wrentmore has directed over 50 professional productions across the world, predominantly new and contemporary plays in both non-profit and commercial theatres. He first came to Arizona as Associate Director on The Royal National Theatre’s production of Hamlet, featuring Simon Russell Beale. Later he returned to ATC directing productions of Copenhagen and Macbeth. In the U.K. productions include Loveplay by Moira Buffini at Jackson’s Lane, Picasso’s Women for The Ambassador Theatre Group, Richard Hurford’s Bedevilled at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and the world premier of Howard Barker’s Wounds to the Face. He was Artistic Director of The Byre Theatre in Scotland from 2004 to 2007 where he directed, amongst other plays, Not About Heroes, The 39 Steps, The Twits, The World, Loot, Golf: The Musical, Translations, Beauty and the Beast, Private Lives, Vincent in Brixton and The Marsh King’s Daughter, which he adapted with Rita Henderson and co-authored the original lyrics with Robert Pettigrew. Internationally, he has directed productions at Meyerhold Theatre in Moscow (The Cripple of Inishmaan), Theatre5 in Omsk; ODA Theatre in Pristina, Kosovo; Lieutenant of Inishmore at National Theatre of Kosovo; The Country by Martin Crimp at National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia; and for the Festival of the Midnight Sun in Tromso, Norway. As an educator, he has led workshops, readings and master-classes in Latvia, Serbia, Kosovo, the United States (Tampa, Boston, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Tucson), Kazakhstan, Russia, Ireland and Cyprus. Mr. Wrentmore worked with Tate Galleries in London to explore their ethos to learning and spent last year as a visiting academic at Hertford College, Oxford University, developing a thesis on the relationship that theatres in Britain and America have with artists. Mr. Wrentmore has worked extensively as a mentor with writers-in-residence, assistant directors, educational institutions. Also, as project director, department chair and guest lecturer. He formed Try-This Consulting, a creative consultancy company that specializes in report-free analysis, supporting creativity, strategy, learning and communication portfolios. Mr. Wrentmore studied at Cambridge University and the Central School of Speech and Drama, as well as being a recent graduate of the prestigious Clore Leadership Programme.
