After Fogel retired in 2020, Stanford efficiently led Imagination Stage out of the pandemic and, starting in April 2022, has partnered with managing director Jason Najjoum to plan for a sustainable future for the group at a deadly time for performing arts organizations. Thanks to the diversified and intensive programming all through the DMV that she has championed, Stanford leaves Imagination Stage within the strongest monetary place of its 43-year historical past.

In a letter to buddies and colleagues, Stanford expressed gratitude to the lots of of devoted and gifted colleagues, employees, board members, fellow artists, and supporters that she has had the chance to work with. “A commitment to youth is the North Star that draws us all,” she wrote. “Together, we have done much in four decades to bring the arts to more than a million young people and to nurture them with the ‘slow food’ that only live theater can provide.”

Since becoming a member of the corporate in 1993, Stanford has produced 160 exhibits, directed 55, written 9, commissioned 50 new works and launched modern academic applications that prioritize social justice and discovering a teenager’s distinctive identification or voice by theater arts. She has lengthy been a pacesetter in selling fairness, range and inclusion by establishing the Youth Speaks to Age Series within the Nineties that introduced a dozen new scripts by BIPOC playwrights to the sphere, by that includes deaf actors and actors with bodily and cognitive disabilities in 9 mainstage productions, and by casting various actors in all the things so that every one kids see themselves within the tales on stage.

The Imagination Stage board of trustees will type a committee to conduct a nationwide seek for Stanford’s successor.

Stanford’s extraordinary contributions to Imagination Stage can be honored, together with these of different girls who made Imagination Stage, on the group’s Annual Gala on March 2, 2024, on the National Museum of Women within the Arts. For extra data and to assist this occasion, e-mail ecummings@imaginationstage.org.