BY MIKE WARREN
EDITOR 

MARSHFIELD AND MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Jill (Mauritz) Anderson is coming home. Well, sort of.

The Marshfield native was recently named as the new Managing Director of the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis, MN. Anderson will assume the post on July 22, and succeeds Kimberly Motes, who departed in October 2023 to become Executive Director of Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

“I am thrilled to join the staff, board, and artists of Children’s Theatre Company, and to partner with Rick Dildine in leading this remarkable organization,” said Anderson via a press release. “I’ve long held CTC in the utmost regard, and am humbled by the opportunity to return to a community I love – and a theatre where I first worked more than 20 years ago – to build upon CTC’s strong foundation with such a dedicated and talented team.”

After touring for one year with a Lutheran youth ministry and music team, the 1996 Marshfield High School graduate returned home to start college at the two-year state center here, where the Spanish major began to cut her theatre teeth.

“Just kind of kept wandering back over to the theatre building, where I had spent time as a young person, and really just refound that home there and it didn’t take long before I wasn’t a Spanish major anymore,” Anderson told Hub City Times earlier this month. 

After two years of college in Marshfield, Anderson transferred to the University of Minnesota, where she quickly learned the pecking order was long and crowded.

“I dropped out,” Anderson told us. “I found, as a transfer student in a department as… theatre departments can be pretty tight-knit, and folks were welcoming, but they had sort of put a gameplan in place for all of their stage management students the year before for who would have which shows and opportunities. I found that a little bit challenging and instead started seeking work out in the community. Before long, I was scheduling my classes around my outside work in professional theaters.”

That’s when Anderson landed part-time jobs at Children’s Theatre Company.

“Before long, I was offered my equity card as a stage manager for a theater called Mixed Blood Theatre Company, and I left school without a degree with a semester to go,” she said. “I eventually did finish getting a degree through the University of Connecticut while I was working out there.”

Since 2016, Anderson has served as Managing Director of Syracuse Stage, where she has been responsible for an $8 million operating budget and has had oversight of fundraising, marketing, and operational matters within the organization. Under Anderson’s leadership, Syracuse Stage has achieved operating surpluses in seven consecutive years, maintained full employment throughout the COVID pandemic, and has seen two of its world premiere productions open on Broadway. 

The company has also launched major expansions of its community engagement and educational programming and was recognized with the Onondaga Historical Association’s Medal and Interfaith Works’ Racial Justice Award. 

“Jill is one of the most distinguished executives in the American theatre,” says incoming Artistic Director Rick Dildine, “and I am delighted that she will be joining me this summer to embark on a new adventure at Children’s Theatre Company. I look forward to working closely with Jill as we collaborate with the amazing board and staff to build a vibrant future for CTC.”

Prior to joining Syracuse Stage, Anderson spent a decade as general manager at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. During her tenure, the O’Neill completed a $7 million capital campaign and campus expansion, doubled its operating budget, and was honored with the National Medal of Arts and a Regional Theatre Tony Award. Under the O’Neill’s aegis, Anderson also developed the Baltic Playwrights Conference, an annual international new play development retreat held in Hiiumaa, Estonia.

Previously, Anderson spent five years in the production office at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage, after working as a stage manager in Minnesota, New Mexico, and Massachusetts. In addition, Anderson is an instructor in the theater management program of the Syracuse University Department of Drama, building on her work with high school and college students elsewhere, including at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

“In Marshfield, careers like the one I have gone on to have never seemed ridiculously out of the question,” Anderson told us during our recent conversation. “And why is that? It’s because of that arts legacy in our community, and for me in particular it was Greg Rindfleisch and Jack Bittrich, but [also] Kathy Biederwolf, Denny Kramer, and the point they always made – and I think especially Rindfleisch – of staying in contact with those who’ve gone before us, having them come back and do things. There were always people from Marshfield who were doing it, so it hasn’t seemed far-fetched.”       

“After an extensive international search process, I couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Jill Anderson to CTC as Managing Director,” says Board Chair Silvia Perez. “Jill’s expertise in this field is unparalleled, and I can’t wait to experience the excellence and spirit of innovation that she’ll bring to our organization.”

“We are so pleased and excited to have Jill join the leadership team,” says Interim Managing Director Steven J. Thompson. “Her experience and knowledge of the theater community will insure that CTC will continue its tradition of excellence and positive community impact.”

Anderson has been recognized as part of the Central NY Business Journal’s “40 Under Forty” and serves on numerous municipal and non-profit boards. The Marshfield native says she’s delighted to return to the Upper Midwest and to the community in which her professional career began.

“I really go back to Marshfield and that handful of really dedicated arts educators and arts leaders in that town,” Anderson told Hub City Times. “Where I would have thought that, especially early on, my resume might not have put me in some of those rooms, my exposure to really sort of doing it all with the folks I mentioned earlier made me a good candidate. It certainly taught me skills can be acquired. Who do you want to be in the room with? So, to have a generic set of tools which I’ve honed over the years has given me these opportunities.”   

Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) is the nation’s largest theatre for young people and serves a multigenerational audience. It creates theatre experiences that educate, challenge, and inspire nearly 250,000 people annually. Every year, thousands of children experience theatre for the first time at CTC.

“In some ways I kind of joke that it’s inevitable that a Marshfield kid end up in the Cities,” Anderson told us. “There are so many of my classmates and friends and compatriots who’ve gone from Marshfield to Minneapolis, but I think I’ve always had that draw to the Cities,” she added. “I didn’t necessarily know it would happen now. A great professional opportunity, a company I’ve admired for so long and a community I’ve loved and in the back of my mind sort of always imagined returning to, plus the proximity to family, it’s a pretty enticing combination.”  

Whether it was going to be Minneapolis or someplace else, Anderson told us she’s known she was theatre-bound since a moment one evening in the sound-and-light booth at the back of the Helen Connor Laird Fine & Performing Arts Theatre at what was then UW-Marshfield/Wood County.

“To me, a key moment was whining in the light booth to Greg (Rindfleisch) while running an orchestra concert,” she recalled. “And really knowing how much I loved being in that side of the campus, I certainly knew I did not want to be a performer. And Greg so clearly just said, ‘Well, of course, you’re a stage manager.’ I didn’t feel like I knew what a stage manager really was, so I checked out a couple of library books, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I can be making lists and charts and wear the headset and be part of everything, but I’m not on stage? This might be optimal.’ And once he sort of named that, it turned out to be so right,” said Anderson. 

Jill Mauritz the MHS student also recalls an experience in her junior English class, taught by the now-retired Bill Zuiker.

“And we had to do a research paper, and even before I knew this really happened, my research topic was non-performance careers in theatre, and my big go-to source was Dean Gray, who had been talked up by Bittrich, by Rindfleisch as one of these Marshfield people making a go of it,” Jill remembered. “And I sat with Dean at Perkins with my tape recorder. Having access to folks like that really just showed that it’s possible.”