Stages Artistic Director Kenn McLaughlin announced today that in another year he will be gone from the theater he devoted so much of his life to, saying "It's time for someone else's turn.

"I am humbled and happy and ready to look into the future," he said. "Stages is in a really good place. I recognize that my separation from Stages is going to be a significant change for the company and for the community. So I was keeping my eye on a time that felt right to me."

Most recently, under his tenure, Stages launched an impressive fundraiser to build and inhabit an entirely new theater complex called The Gordy, which allows it to run three different productions at the same time.
The theater has maintained a constant link to theater students at Sam Houston State and often gave them and other fledgling thespians a significant help up in the business.

McLaughlin announced his retirement after 23 years at a board meeting Wednesday night but the Stages executive committee has known about his planned departure a bit longer, he said. The executive board and will begin a search for his successor and with a year's notice what they are hoping for is no gap in the leadership and perhaps an overlap between the two," he said. .

"Every dream I ever had came true n this place and then building The Gordy? Oh my God. It's beyond my wildest dreams."

Eventually, he and his partner hope to  live in Ireland where McLaughlin has citizenship and family there. More immediately he hopes to write more which may or may not be related to theater.

Earlier in his career he had worked with elder populations, especially marginalized elder populations. "People who were in nursing homes who literally had no family," he said. "During COVID I felt such sadness about elder populations who could not access their families. I just feel called to move back and work with that population again."

"I'm trying to just let it go, open myself up to the universe and see what happens." In a video taken at his home, he talked about why Stages has been so important to him.

Asked what he hopes he's remembered for, McLaughlin said, "That he loved what he did. I want people to remember that the dedicated track in my heart was always to the emerging artist and the impact I can have or I could have had to have  been the platform to provide the on-ramp for the early career artists, that would be  a really great thing for people to remember what was important to me.

"I hope people will always say that I was kind. And I did whatever I could to uplift the theater community."

Asked why theater, McLaughlin said: "I do not have a memory in my youngest memory when I am not sitting with my dad or my grandmother hearing a story. I grew up in a household where story was everything. And it's just in my blood. I don't know if there was anything else that I ever could do. I tried other things; those were not as successful as me just following this impulse to share story. That's just who I am.

"I don't think that part's going away. Just the way I use that gift may change. I don't know. The story's not over."