Cinnabar Theater Gets New Executive Director

Cinnabar Theater has a new executive director.

Terence Keane comes to the little red schoolhouse on the hill from Berkeley Repertory Theater, where he spent eight years.

“I’m delighted to become part of the Cinnabar family,” said Keane in a statement released Monday. “I love its unique blend of drama and music, and…and am eager to connect with Cinnabar’s audience and learn how we can work together to deepen the theater’s involvement in the local community and raise its profile on the wider stage.”

At Berkeley Rep, Keane led the marketing team to the highest ticket revenue in the company’s history and transformed the theater’s reputation with stories in the local and national press.

He comes to Cinnabar thanks to a one-year grant the theater received. Moving forward, the theater hopes to attract new donors, including more corporate and local business sponsors, who can fund its operations.

“We want to connect with all the people we have not reached yet and Terence can help us do that,” said Elly Lichenstein, Cinnabar’s artistic director and current executive director, who will stay on at the theater. “So often I hear people say ‘What do you do up on that hill?’ or ‘I’m afraid to go up that ramp’, as if they’ll fall off the edge of the world if they do. We want to change that.”

Keane is a graduate of the Boston University School of Theatre who has worked for or volunteered with the American Museum of Natural History, the Big Apple Circus, the National Audubon Society, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, SF Playhouse, Usonia Jazz and the Yolo Basin Foundation.

Cinnabar was created in 1972 by Marvin and Jan Klebe on the spot of an old schoolhouse on Petaluma Boulevard North and Corona Road. Despite some financial difficulties in recent years, the theater has managed to hang on, producing a steady stream of plays, musicals, operas and concerts.