Ten Thousand Things theater leader to step down as company announces new season

Michelle Hensley, the thoughtful, pioneering leaderof Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, will step down after the 2017-'18 season, the company has announced. Hensley founded the company in California in 1989 and moved it to the Twin Cities in 1993. Named for a Buddhist precept, Ten Thousand Things takes professional theater to underserved communities in prisons, shelters, community centers and other venues. The company has grown from a budget of $500, which is was the total outlay of its first show, to now $750,000. Most of that is spent on hiring topnotch performers. The company spends very on sets or props.

The Ten Thousand Things model, of taking theater to people, has been followed by more than half-a-dozen theaters nationwide.

For Hensley, the timing is right.

"I'll be 60 when the changeover happens, and that's a good time to look at doing something else," Hensley said.

The company is in the process of searching for her replacement.

Ten Thousand Things also announced titles for its newest season, kicking of with Euripides' "Electra" under the direction of Rebecca Novick of California Shakespeare Theater, and featuring such cast members as Michelle Barber, Meghan Kreidler, Kurt Kwan, Audrey Park, Mikell Sapp, Ricardo Vazquez and Karen Wiese-Thompson.

Playwright Kira Obolensky has been in residence with the company, and her comedy, "Park and Lake," will premiere under the direction of Michelle Hensley and Luverne Seifert. The cast features Stephen Cartmell, Sun Mee Chomet, Joy Dolo, H. Adam Harris, George Keller, Thomasina Petrus, Kimberly Richardson, Luverne Seifert and Eric "Pogi" Sumangil (Feb. 16- March 11, 2018).

And the company closes its 2017-'18 season with the first show it ever did: Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person of Szechwan." Hensley directs this revival featuring actors Sun Mee Chomet, Joy Dolo, Kurt Kwan, Elise Langer, Harry Waters Jr, Karen Wiese-Thompson and Max Wojtanowicz (May 10–June 3, 2017).