After 35 years, Everyman Theatre founder is ready for his curtain call

Following decades of directing others, Vincent Lancisi is taking his own cue: Exit stage left.

“I think the key to life is knowing when to start something and when to finish it,” Lancisi said recently.

After spending 35 years growing Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre from a graduate student’s lofty dream to a trusted staple of the region’s theater community, the company’s founder and lone artistic director will retire at the end of June.

“Some people just have to have the purpose of work. They don’t want to sit idle, right? Neither do I,” said Lancisi, who’s directed more than 60 plays for Everyman. “I want to enjoy life in a different way.”

You can hardly blame him. Lancisi has dedicated his adult life to Everyman, which put on its first play, “The Runner Stumbles,” in 1990 at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Charles Village before the company had its own home. The church lacked heat, Lancisi said, so patrons wrapped themselves in blankets from the basement homeless shelter.

“We had to find a way,” he said.

After a nomadic first few years, Everyman Theatre established a home on the 1700 block of North Charles Street for its 1994-95 season.

But times remained hard as Lancisi worked to get more people through the door. Once, the electric company showed up over an unpaid bill. He called his late mother in tears.

“I said, ‘Mom, I’m hiding in my office because BGE is here, and I know they’re gonna turn off the lights,’” Lancisi recalled. “She said, ‘Be quiet!’ God, I miss her.”

Kyle Prue, who met Lancisi in the mid-’80s when they were students at Washington’s Catholic University of America, said Lancisi’s love of theater, and the people who make it, has never wavered. No one got paid much in the beginning, Prue said, so Lancisi showed gratitude in other ways.

“He was always going to Sabatino’s in Little Italy,” said Prue, who’s now producing director of Everyman. “We’re in tech rehearsals, and here’s a big chafing dish full of pasta so we can all eat.”

The perseverance paid off as Everyman built word-of-mouth momentum and a growing subscriber base. Its reputation was that it punched above its weight, putting on memorable productions such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Proof,” “Amadeus” and “The Crucible.”

Bryan Rakes first saw an Everyman production in 2002 — “My Children! My Africa!” by Athol Fugard — and was so “blown away” he became a season ticket subscriber.

“I think it rivals sometimes what you can see in New York,” said Rakes, who’s in his fourth year as Everyman’s board president.

Lancisi credits Everyman’s longevity to its resident company, a diverse group of actors that regularly performs together each season. He believes the actors’ familiarity and trust in each other leads to powerful performances that can’t be achieved with a constantly rotating cast.

“It’s as if, at first rehearsal, they’ve already been rehearsing for two weeks,” said Lancisi, who’s seen cast members get married. “They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”

That won’t change in his absence. Lancisi is excited for his successor, 41-year-old Brandon Weinbrenner, because he comes from Houston’s Alley Theatre, another company that uses the increasingly rare resident company model.

Amid a search with more than 100 candidates, Lancisi and Everyman’s board of directors were drawn to Weinbrenner’s extroverted enthusiasm.

“He has the kind of energy I had 25 years ago, and that’s what this theater deserves,” Lancisi said.

Weinbrenner said he’s felt “no intimidation” from having to follow Lancisi.

“He has been nothing but warm and generous with his time, with his support, with his knowledge,” Weinbrenner said.

Asked what he’s most proud of, Lancisi, 64, pointed to the walls of Everyman’s downtown home at 315 W. Fayette St., where the company moved in 2013 following an $18 million fundraising campaign.

There’s also the theater’s dedication to inclusivity, from its pay-what-you-choose ticket program to its C.A.R.E.S. team, an in-house Committee for Anti-Racism, Equity, Solidarity. Education is a pillar, too, as reflected in its summer camp for kids, internships and training classes for adults and kids taught by resident company members.

The theater brings in more than 30,000 visitors per season, while single-ticket sales have increased nearly 27% since 2023, according to Everyman spokesperson Corey Frier-Ritsch.

But for it to succeed another 35 years, Lancisi said, downtown must transform. It needs more “destination” restaurants and retail stores, along with better public transportation and cheaper parking — urban challenges not unique to Baltimore, he said.

The theater, though, must also fight against the comforts of home and the glut of entertainment options a click away.

“If it’s hard to get here and it’s hard to park and it’s hard to afford it — people are just not going to come,” said Lancisi, who called theater a luxury. “They’re gonna stream their life away.”

Soon, those will no longer be his problems. In mid-April, Lancisi wrapped up his final directing job as artistic director, the comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” “Emma,” an adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, will close his last season, running May 17 through June 14.

He wouldn’t shut the door on one day coming back to direct a show as a freelancer, but Lancisi plans to initially keep his distance from the theater he created so Weinbrenner has the space to learn the job. Lancisi won’t be there when the curtain opens on the 2026-27 season in late August.

“That’s his night,” he said. “Not mine.”

Instead, Lancisi will likely be at his “happy place,” Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach, where he and his wife will soon move. He’s looking forward to traveling, cooking complex recipes and seeing movies — simple pleasures he rarely indulged in because it felt like “cheating on theater.”

“I’m saying goodbye to a lot. And yet, I also have to remind myself, I’m not dying,” he said. “While I have my health and I’m a young retiree, I want to go see the world.”