A Note on Keen Company’s Leadership Transition
Kelly Kerwin, Artistic Director
Annie Middleton, Producing Director
June 25, 2025
Keen Company announces new leadership ahead of its 26th season. In a new dual leadership model, Kelly Kerwin will serve as Artistic Director and Annie Middleton will serve as Producing Director. The pair will share responsibility as co-leaders of the organization, succeeding the departing Artistic Director Jonathan Silverstein who will step down on June 30th, 2025.
The appointment follows a nationwide search led by the Keen Company Board of Directors. Keen Company’s Board President Courtney Costello said. “The board of directors of Keen Company is deeply grateful to Jonathan Silverstein for his extraordinary dedication and skill as Artistic Director over the past 12 years. During his time as Artistic Director, Jonathan broadened the range of experiences and identities depicted on our stage and formed authentic relationships with the audiences whose stories were being told. In this way, he realized the Keen mission of creating “intimate theater that celebrates the complexities of hope and the joys of the human condition” on a new level. The collaboration between Jonathan and Managing Producer Ashley DiGiorgi, which was integral to the company’s achievements, allowed us to grow both artistically and financially through challenging times and to expand our reach to audiences and artists. As Kelly Kerwin and Annie Middleton assume co-leadership of the company, we honor the legacy that Jonathan has created and welcome them warmly, confident that they will craft a unique and forward-looking expression of Keen’s mission. Their fearlessness, expertise, and creativity, combined with a deep understanding of our company’s values, make them the ideal leaders for Keen’s next era.”
Newly appointed Artistic Director Kelly Kerwin said “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to co-lead Keen Company, and I am honored to take the baton from the wonderful and generous Jonathan Silverstein. He made Keen a beacon for intimate theater that helped people feel connected and seen. I look forward to serving Keen’s mission and audience while making big things happen. We will celebrate artists who bring surprise and meaning to our lives. To say I am thrilled to partner with Annie Middleton is an understatement. Annie’s commitment to cultivating joyful spaces for theater artists makes her uniquely suited to this position. Together we will lead Keen into the future, and we will work to help alleviate the current culture of exhaustion by producing theater that replenishes the spirit and brings people together.”
Kelly Kerwin (Artistic Director) is an artistic leader who has built her career curating and producing theater spanning a range of forms including new plays, site-specific theater, Broadway-bound musicals, and devised work. From 2021 to 2024, she was the Artistic Director of Oklahoma City Repertory Theater, where she restored the dormant company into the top contemporary theater in the region. Under her tenure, OKC Rep produced 13 shows, including world and national premieres, work by international artists, collaborations with local non-profits a collaboration with the NBA Thunder, and she created an ongoing partnership with the Under the Radar Festival. From 2017 to 2021, she was at The Public Theater where she produced world premiere plays and musicals including Soft Power by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori, M’lima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage, and Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson’s. During this time, she simultaneously produced the Under the Radar Festival where she worked with artists from over twenty counties and six continents. She shepherded The Public’s Devised Theater Working Group and produced the work-in-progress showings as part of Under the Radar. In 2016, she received the Mark Bly Creative Capacities Fellowship to support POP! A Pop-Up Performance Festival, which she conceived, curated, and produced featuring brand-new theater experiences by 17 emerging artists in seven spaces (including one automobile!) throughout Bushwick. She recently partnered with Ato Blankson-Wood to relaunch POP! with the first iteration at Here Arts Center as part of Queer@Here. Kelly has worked on the artistic staff of Yale Rep, Steppenwolf, Atlantic, The House Theatre of Chicago and Collaboration. At Yale School of Drama, she was the co-artistic director for Yale Cabaret’s 46th Season. She co-founded Guided Tour, a site-specific, live art experience providing fake tours of real spaces, and she helped launch Chicago’s Salonathon-a weekly series specializing in underground performance. Kelly has her MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama.
Annie Middleton (Producing Director) is a passionate art-maker, creative producer and theater manager with a deep life-long commitment to the live performing arts, and more than 10 years of experience in top leadership positions at various NYC-based arts organizations. She most recently served as a General Manager Consultant at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) as well as a Development Consultant with A.D. Hamingson & Associates, working with organizations including New York Stage and Film and Bushwick Starr. Annie has also served as Managing Director of Waterwell Heartbeat Opera and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Additionally, Annie has worked as an independent producer and creative partner to a number of individual artists and companies. She is a graduate of Yale School of Drama’s Theater Management MFA program.
Keen Company was founded in 2000 by Carl Forsman who served as Artistic Director until 2012, when Jonathan Silverstein took over the role and helmed the organization until his decision to step down in June 2025. Kelly Kerwin and Annie Middleton will officially begin their tenure July 1st, 2025.
August 14, 2024
Keen Company announced that Artistic Director Jonathan Silverstein will step down as Artistic Director following the completion of the 2024-25 season. Jonathan has held the position for the past 12 years starting in 2012.
Silverstein says, “For the past 12 years, it has been a joy and privilege to lead Keen Company. When I first took over from founding Artistic Director Carl Forsman, I had three goals in mind: bring musicals to our stage, develop and produce new work, and cultivate greater diversity both on and off stage. I am proud to say I have taken great strides in all three areas, while at the same time fostering a community where joy is paramount, and all are welcome. Over the past several years, Keen has showcased an ever-widening breadth of stories, so it seems only fitting that I now hand the reins to a new leader who will further define Keen’s unique mission into its next quarter century. Personally, I look forward to other challenges and opportunities outside of Keen including focusing on my directing and teaching work.”
“I have loved every minute of my time working with Jonathan Silverstein as a director. Our first collaboration was A Walk in the Woods, and we have been collaborating on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for the past two years. It was Jonathan’s brilliant idea to do it in intimate settings, usually in people’s living rooms. His tenure at Keen has been equally successful and revelatory. He’s just the best there is.” — Kathleen Chalfant, Actor
“I fell in love with Keen Company, its mission and Jonny Silverstein several years ago doing a play for them and have had a wonderful time serving on their Board and supporting Jonathan’s vision for Keen.” — Marsha Mason, Actor, Director, and Board Member
“Jonny personifies Keen Company ethos—he’s a passionate, insightful leader genuinely interested in connecting with audiences and artists. He made Keen Company a much-needed home for intimate musicals; the roster of artists who have graced Keen’s stage is a testament to his talent, vision, and the importance of Keen’s work. I know Jonny will carry that Keen spirit with him wherever his next chapter takes him.” — Adam Gwon, Composer
“Jonny is a star. Not in the celebrity way, but in the sense that he‘s got a gravitational pull, keeps people orbiting, and both warms and lights up entire worlds.” — Chisa Hutchinson, Playwright and Board Member.
Keen was founded in 2000 by Carl Forsman, taking inspiration from early 20th Century American playwrights to challenge the irony and cynicism pervasive in contemporary popular culture with plays that were optimistic and generous in spirit. Jonathan Silverstein, a resident director since 2007, assumed the Artistic Director position in 2012. Under Silverstein’s leadership, Keen has widened its focus to contemporary work, musicals, new plays, and a more diverse roster of playwrights and creatives.
Under Silverstein’s tenure, Keen Company has brought to the stage intimate musicals such as Ordinary Days by Adam Gwon (First NY Revival), Tick, Tick...BOOM! by Jonathan Larson (First NY Revival), John & Jen by Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald (First NY Revival), and Marry Me a Little by Stephen Sondheim (First NY Revival). Silverstein has championed new work with the world premieres of Fish by Kia Corthron, This Space Between Us by Peter Gil-Sheridan, Surely Goodness and Mercy by Chisa Hutchinson, When It’s You by Courtney Baron, and Boy by Anna Ziegler (winner of the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for new American Play). Silverstein has also produced acclaimed productions with the first New York Revivals of classic plays from a diverse roster of playwrights including Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage, a site-specific production of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage, Molly Sweeney by Brian Friel, Later Life by A.R. Gurney, Lonely Planet by Steven Dietz, Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene, A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing, Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky, The Film Society by Jon Robin Baitz, and The Old Boy by A.R. Gurney. Keen has been honored with an Obie Award and two Drama Desk Awards as well as eleven Drama Desk Nominations, two Drama League Nominations, one AUDELCO nomination, and one Antonyo Nomination. Four of Keen Company's productions have been immortalized as part of the New York Public Library Theatre on Film Archive.
During the difficult pandemic season, Keen commissioned and produced seven new radio dramas as part of the company’s Hear/Now Season of Audio Theater including Kenny Finkle’s eight-part audio play with music 1993, Digging in the Dark by Pearl Cleage, All We Need Is Us by James Anthony Tyler, Radio Nowhere by Kate Cortesi, Adventurephile by musical team Melissa Li and Kit Yan, The Telegram by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, and That Old Perplexity by Deb Margolin.
As Artistic Director, Silverstein also launched the Keen Playwrights Lab fostering mid-career playwrights and showcasing their work to a wider audience. Alumni of the Keen Playwrights Lab include Jessica Dickey, Gabe McKinley, Brooke Berman, Kenny Finkle, Kate Moira Ryan, Courtney Baron, Michele Lowe, Ken Weitzman, Julie Jordan, Andrea Thome, Stefanie Zadravec, Kia Corthron, Rinne Groff, Edwin Sànchez, Mona Mansour, Deb Margolin, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen.
With a focus on mentorship and audience connection, Silverstein has led Keen to expand opportunities for students and emerging artists, accessible programming, community engagement, ethos commitments, anti-racist practices, and much more.
Some of Silverstein’s directing credits throughout his tenure include a site-specific production of The Year of Magical Thinking starring Kathleen Chalfant and performed in living rooms and community centers throughout NYC, the first New York revival of Tick, Tick…. BOOM! starring Nick Blaemire, Ordinary Days (Drama League Nomination), John and Jen starring Kate Baldwin, A Walk in the Woods starring Kathleen Chalfant, and Marry Me a Little (Drama Desk nomination). Prior to becoming Artistic Director, Silverstein directed several shows for the company including Lemon Sky, The Dining Room (Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Ensemble), Tea and Sympathy, and The Hasty Heart. Other Selected Off-Broadway credits: The Tempermentals (Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Ensemble) Red Herring (FringeNYC; Outstanding Direction Award), Blueprint (Summer Play Festival), and The Train Play (Clubbed Thumb). Regional: Long Wharf, Bucks County, Huntington, Old Globe, Cleveland Playhouse, Merrimack Rep, Dorset Theatre Festival, Cape Rep Theatre. Alumnus, The Drama League Directors Project. MFA, UCSD. Member SDC.