Michael Maso has served as the managing director of Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company since 1982. He has produced more than 200 plays in partnership with four artistic directors and is one of the most well-regarded managing directors in the theatre industry. Under his tenure, the Huntington has received over 160 Elliot Norton and IRNE awards, as well as the 2013 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Mr. Maso received the 2016 Massachusetts Nonprofit Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as TCG’s 2012 Theatre Practitioner Award, the Huntington’s 2012 Wimberly Award, StageSource’s 2010 Theatre Hero Award, the 2005 Commonwealth Award (the state’s highest arts honor), and the 2000 Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. In 2004 the Boston Herald honored him as Theatre Man of the Year. Mr. Maso led the Huntington’s 10-year drive to build the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, which opened in September 2004, and most recently led the redevelopment and renovation of the Huntington Avenue Theatre, which reopened in October, 2022. He previously served on the Boston Cultural Planning Steering Committee, and as a member of the board for ArtsBoston, Theatre Communications Group (TCG), and StageSource. From 1997 to 2005 Mr. Maso served as the president of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT). In 2005, he was named as one of a dozen members of the inaugural class of the Barr Fellows Program. Prior to the Huntington, he served as the managing director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival, general manager of New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company, business manager for PAF Playhouse on Long Island, and as an independent arts management consultant based in Taos, New Mexico.
Michael, while being an extraordinarily accomplished professional, is modest to a fault. He has a wonderful, quirky, and fun side to him. We are comrades in slipping off to see movies that our spouses would cringe at going to (i.e. the Marvel Universe films). And, apparently, he cried at Top Gun: Maverick. We are traveling buddies; recently to pre-COVID Cuba, and soon, Israel/Palestine. In retrospect, it appears we are attracted to dictatorial and seriously flawed democratic countries.
Wonderfully guileless, this is as genuine and sincere a friend as one could have. And thoroughly erudite, I have met my match in terms of somebody who loves to read and devour books. He joyously introduced me to the cartoon, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and is appropriate, I am hardly the genius, and had I known, I might have named our pup Remi Mr. Peabody. We live five minutes from one another in both Brookline and Truro. Michael has promised to play pool with me - if the advocacy of his wonderful, ebullient wife Lisa prevails on my wife Iris - and I will finally get one in our home. How wonderful it will be to celebrate my 80th birthday in the Maso Studio at the Huntington Theater that he has magnificently led the campaign to renovate.