Michael Ritchie

In addition, Michael inaugurated CTG’s New Play Production Program, designed to foster the development and production of new work.

On January 1, 2005 Ritchie joined Center Theatre Group as artistic director. In his first four seasons at CTG, he premiered the musicals The Drowsy Chaperone, Curtains, 13 and 9 to 5: The Musical (all of which moved to Broadway and received a combined 25 Tony Award nominations). He has produced 40 world premieres including the musicals Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Sleeping Beauty Wakes, and the plays Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Water & Power and Yellow Face; and he presented a broad range of plays and musicals ranging from Dead End to Romance to The Black Rider to blockbusters such as Jersey Boys, Edward Scissorhands, God of Carnage, August: Osage County, Matilda, The Trip to Bountiful and Mary Poppins.

Rediscovered American classics include Dead End, Johnny on the Spot, Street Scene and, 50 years after it was first presented on Broadway -- The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller, a production that moved to Broadway and was chosen by Time magazine as one of the year's 10 Best Productions in 2002.

In 2002, the Williamstown Theatre Festival was the recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award.

In 1996, Ritchie was appointed producer of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. New plays that began their lives in Williamstown and moved on to off-Broadway runs under his direction include Corners by David Rabe, Far East by A.R. Gurney, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told by Paul Rudnick, Chaucer in Rome by John Guare, The Glimmer Brothers (Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine) by Warren Leight and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan.

In 1982, while stage managing a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, Ritchie met actress Kate Burton, the daughter of actor Richard Burton. They married in 1985 and have two children, a son, actor Morgan Ivor (born May 14, 1988), and a daughter, Charlotte Frances (born January 19, 1998).

Ritchie began his professional career in the theatre in 1980 as a production stage manager in New York City. Over the next 15 years, he stage-managed more than 50 shows on and off-Broadway including productions at Lincoln Center Theater, Circle in the Square, Circle Rep, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons, New York City Center and the National Actors Theatre.

Michael Ritchie (born October 17, 1957 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is an American artistic director of Center Theatre Group, overseeing the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre.