Geva Theatre's Comeback and the Future of Local Art with Mark Cuddy

Mark Cuddy spent 27 years as Artistic Director of Geva Theatre Center, transforming a financially struggling institution into one of Rochester's most beloved cultural landmarks. In this conversation with host Mark Southwick, Cuddy reflects on his unlikely path from the streets of Boston to the stages of Rochester, the challenges of sustaining regional theater through economic upheaval and a global pandemic, and his exciting new chapter founding The Classics Company.

From Boston Latin School to the Stage

Mark Cuddy grew up in the Dorchester and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods of Boston and was admitted to Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in America, founded in 1635. The school was rigorous and classical, but Cuddy found himself restless and disconnected from the purely academic curriculum. Everything changed when a Greek professor named Master Jamison called him down to his homeroom and handed him a note with the names of the artistic director and general manager of the Boston Children's Theater.

Ten minutes into that first acting class, it was a real epiphany. I heard angels sing. I was 14 years old, and I had found my passion.

From that moment, Cuddy was hooked. He spent the rest of his high school years skipping class to build scenery and rehearse, finishing near the bottom of his class academically but discovering the vocation that would define his life. His father was skeptical — acting was not a path he had envisioned for his son — but his older sister, herself a performer, quietly championed him.

A Career Built Across the Country

After graduating college, Cuddy ran his first theater at age 22. He led a theater in Northampton, Massachusetts, completed what he describes as his graduate school at the Denver Center Theater Company, then ran the Sacramento Theater Company. By 1995, with two young children and a second on the way, he and his wife Christina were ready to head back east. They sold everything, leased a new car, and drove cross-country, stopping along the way as Cuddy became a finalist for the top position at Geva Theatre in Rochester.

He had never been to Rochester. The theater was carrying a $1.3 million deficit and a dwindling subscriber base. But after a tour of the city — guided by Jennifer Leonard of the Rochester Area Community Foundation and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Johnson, who were simply friends of a friend — Cuddy and his wife were won over by the warmth of the community. He started September 1st, 1995, and within a week, the couple knew they were home.

Turning Around Geva: Art Meets Business

Cuddy arrived at Geva just as the economic engine that had powered Rochester's arts scene was beginning to sputter. Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb were downsizing. The personal wealth that had flowed into cultural institutions was leaving the region. Cuddy had to be both artist and executive, and he embraced that dual role.

I rarely called myself an artistic director. I am a producer. Business was part of the job, and I had to know what I was doing. I did it for the audience.

On multiple occasions over his 27-year tenure, Geva's managing director was recruited away to larger theaters — a testament to the institution's success. During those transitions, Cuddy served as sole CEO, managing both the artistic and business sides simultaneously. He credits his longevity to thinking always as an institutionalist: making programming choices based on what was best for the theater and its audience, not simply on personal preference.

The typical tenure for a regional theater artistic director is 7 to 12 years. Cuddy lasted more than three times that. He employed over 4,000 artists during his time at Geva and oversaw the development of more than 25 world premiere productions.

Programming Balance and the Challenge of New Work

Cuddy was passionate about introducing new and challenging work to Rochester audiences, but he learned quickly that balance was essential. He references Ross Douthat's book The Decadent Society, which argues that American arts have fallen into stagnation through repetition and risk aversion. Cuddy agrees with the diagnosis, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic.

You could challenge people intellectually on stage. You could challenge people emotionally on stage. But if you challenged people morally — if you offended their values — you really heard about it.

He found that Rochester audiences, who prize tradition and routine, responded well to a carefully curated mix of familiar and adventurous programming. The key was never to leave anyone behind — to introduce new ideas alongside the familiar, to bring audiences along rather than confront them. Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Molière, he notes with some irony, were consistently difficult sells at Geva. The boomer generation simply was not drawn to the classical canon.

The Pandemic, Retirement, and a New Beginning

When the pandemic shuttered theaters in 2020, Cuddy made a pivotal decision. He concluded that it would take five to ten years for regional theater to truly recover, and he announced his retirement with 50 months' notice. He left Geva in July 2022, then was immediately recruited for an interim leadership role at the Cleveland Playhouse, which stretched from four months to eighteen months as the institution faced significant challenges.

Returning to Rochester in late 2023, Cuddy took six months off before family circumstances — caring for an older brother he relocated to Rochester — made it clear he needed to stay close to home. Rather than step away from theater entirely, he founded The Classics Company, a new intimate theater venture dedicated to producing the classical repertoire he had never been able to stage at Geva.

The Classics Company: Chekhov in an 80-Seat Church

The Classics Company is performing at the Multi-Use Community Cultural Center (MuCCC) on Atlantic Avenue, a renovated 19th-century church with 80 seats. Cuddy launched the company with three Chekhov plays — The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, and Three Sisters — casting all three simultaneously in auditions held last spring. Thirty-three Rochester-area actors were cast across the three productions, with five performing in more than one play.

Chekhov is the father of modern drama. These are relationship plays — family plays. There is no good person or bad person. Just people, with all their highs and lows.

The Seagull opened in January to sold-out performances. The Cherry Orchard follows in March, with Three Sisters in May. Cuddy chose Chekhov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, as a tribute to the playwright's extraordinary humanity — Chekhov died at 44 from tuberculosis, having performed much of his medical work for free, and his plays reflect a deep empathy for the full complexity of human experience.

Cuddy plans to announce next year's playwright in mid-March, hinting at another Russian dramatist to continue building a coherent multi-year classical repertoire. For Rochester audiences who want to experience intimate, world-class classical theater, The Classics Company can be found at theclassicscompany.org.