Main Stage West, the theater in downtown Sebastopol, held its annual fundraising gala on Saturday, March 7, at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Throngs of theater supporters gathered to hear the announcement of the theater’s upcoming season’s plays and to meet its new management team, Keith Baker and Ivy Rose Miller, who will be taking over the management of the theater from John and Elizabeth Craven.
“After 10 seasons, John and Beth Craven are going to be passing along the managerial duties at the theater,” Keith Baker said. “I’ll be serving as the producing artistic director, and Ivy Rose Miller will be serving as the managing artistic director. So we’ll be splitting the artistic decisions and taking over the managerial side of things.”
“John and Beth will still be involved directing and acting and designing,” he said. “It’s just that, after 10 seasons, it’s time for them to not have to work as hard so they can spend some more time with their beautiful grandson, who lives down in Los Angeles.”
Baker has a BFA in theatre from University of California at Santa Barbara and then ran a theater company in Santa Barbara. After he moved back to Sonoma County, he ran theater summer camps at Sixth Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa and actually had a hand in saving the Sebastopol theater when it was about to close in 2011.
“I was actually in the last play at the Sonoma County Repertory Theater when it closed down,” he said. “I was in ‘Cyrano.’ I still remember being at rehearsal when Scott and Jen (Artistic Directors Scott Phillips and Jennifer King) came in and said, ‘We regret to inform you, this will be the last show here.’”
“That very night I talked with Beth Craven, and we decided we wanted to try to make sure that the space stayed a theater. So we quickly formed a new nonprofit called the Performing Artists Coalition for Theater. Once we got that set up, then we were able to enter into the lease, and since then, we’ve been doing business as Main Stage West.”
Baker served as the managing director for the first three years at Main Stage West, then took some time off to spend with his young family.
“For the last five years I’ve been focusing on teaching and raising the kids, and now that our second little boy is about to turn two, it finally seemed like there’d be a little more time. He’s old enough that I can bring him to the theater and throw a paintbrush in his hand and say, ‘Paint the floor black.’”
“We’re just very excited we’re all part of the same theater family,” Baker said, “and we just want to keep on with the tradition of what Main Stage West has been doing, which is really wonderful professional theater in a tiny little storefront space in downtown Sebastopol.”
