College of Fine Arts Names New Directors for Schools of Theatre, Music, and Visual Arts
College of Fine Arts Names New Directors for Schools of Theatre, Music, and Visual Arts
Playwright Kirsten Greenidge, painter Marc Schepens, and cellist Michael Reynolds will assume new roles July 1
This article was originally published in BU Today on March 20, 2024. By Joel Brown. Photo by Cydney Scott
A playwright, a painter, and the founding cellist of a world-renowned string quartet will take over as leaders of the three schools at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts on July 1.
Award-winning playwright Kirsten Greenidge, a CFA associate professor of playwriting and theater arts, will become director of the School of Theatre. Marc Schepens (CFA’12), a senior lecturer in art, painting, will begin a two-year term as interim director of the School of Visual Arts. And Michael Reynolds, a professor of music, cello, and the Muir String Quartet cellist since 1979, will lead the School of Music.
“I am extremely excited about this cohort of new leaders,” says CFA Dean Harvey Young. “They are incredible artists—truly of the highest caliber—who are student-focused and committed to elevating the fine and performing arts at BU and beyond.”
Greenidge, who won an Obie Award for her drama Milk Like Sugar, will take over the School of Theatre post from Susan Mickey, a CFA professor of costume design and an award-winning professional who has served in that role for the past five years.
“Kirsten Greenidge is an accomplished, in-demand playwright whose writings are transforming American theater,” Young says. “As a mentor, educator, and champion of new works, she is the right person to lead the development of a new generation of theater artists.”
Greenidge is well-known to theatergoers in Boston and across the country for plays that examine race, class, and gender, including The Luck of the Irish and Baltimore. Next up is her Morning, Noon, and Night, a joint production of CFA and Boston’s Company One Theatre opening in April. She founded and maintains the School of Theatre’s New Works, which includes First Pages, Springboard Reading Series, and Next Stage Workshops.
She has been a PEN/Laura Pels Playwriting Award recipient, the playwright laureate of Boston, an artist-in-residence at Company One, and a Huntington Playwriting Fellow. Her drama Common Ground Revisited, an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book about the 1970s Boston school busing crisis by J. Anthony Lukas, co-conceived with Melia Bensussen, was produced by the Huntington Theatre Company in 2022.
Schepens will serve as interim director of the School of Visual Arts. He succeeds Dana Clancy, a CFA associate professor of art, painting, who has been director for the past six years. In his new role, Schepens will lead a strategic planning exercise for the school, where he has been director of undergraduate studies.
“Marc Schepens played a key role in the design of new visual arts degrees, which has been instrumental to the national ascendance of CFA Visual Arts,” Young says. “A painter with a dynamic presence across New England, he is perfectly positioned to lead CFA’s School of Visual Arts.”
In addition to being a noted painter, Schepens also creates drawings and prints. He has been deeply involved in the Meds at the MFA program for BU medical students at the Museum of Fine Arts and helps direct the BU Visual Arts Summer Institute for high school students. Among his recent solo exhibitions are East Point, at Boston’s Bromfield Gallery; Dog Paintings, at the Transit Gallery at Harvard Medical School; and Works on Paper, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Harbor Gallery.
At the School of Music, Reynolds takes over from Gregory Melchor-Barz, a professor of ethnomusicology, who has held the position for the last five years.
As the founding, and current, cellist with the acclaimed Grammy-winning Muir String Quartet and as a soloist, Reynolds has performed over 2,000 concerts around the world and played with such diverse artists as Leon Fleisher, Menachem Pressler, Gil Shaham, Richard Stoltzman, CFA Dean Emerita Phyllis Curtin, and Benny Goodman. The Muir String Quartet records on the EcoClassics label Reynolds founded.
The Quartet has been in residence at CFA since 1983, the same year Reynolds began teaching there, and the group gives annual summer workshops at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI).
In 1997, Reynolds established the Classics for Kids Foundation (CFKF), a grant program that supports string programs serving rural and at-risk youth in all 50 states. The foundation’s matching grants fund high-quality string instruments, including ukuleles, guitars, and harps.
“Michael Reynolds is a champion for the transformative power of music on a person’s life, especially young people,” says Young. “As an award-winning musician, an engaged mentor, and a prominent philanthropist, he has a clear vision for how to further elevate an already accomplished, trailblazing School of Music.”
Greenidge and Reynolds are expected to serve for three years and Schepens for two. School directorships rotate among senior faculty.
Mickey will retire at the end of the current academic year, while Clancy and Melchor-Barz will each take a sabbatical before returning to the faculty in 2025. All three will be celebrated at CFA in the coming weeks.
I am extremely excited about this cohort of new leaders. They are incredible artists—truly of the highest caliber—who are student-focused and committed to elevating the fine and performing arts at BU and beyond.
