Long Wharf Theater's Artistic Director Fired Over Sexual Misconduct Accusations

The board of the New Haven, Connecticut, theater acted one day after The New York Times published a story detailing the allegations by multiple women, four of whom accused Edelstein of groping or other forms of unwanted touching.

Several former employees also said Edelstein frequently used sexually explicit language toward and about women in the workplace.

“The board of trustees voted to terminate Gordon Edelstein, effective immediately,” Laura Pappano, the board chairwoman, said in an interview. She said Edelstein had been barred from the theater’s premises as of Monday.

Pappano said that board would hire an independent agency to conduct a review of the theater’s procedures for reporting misconduct, and that “implicit in that” is a desire to understand what went wrong during Edelstein’s tenure. “We want to do better,” she said. “All of this reporting has brought to our attention things that we did not know about, and we feel strongly that going forward we want to know.”

The board met for 100 minutes over pizza in a rehearsal hall at the theater; Pappano said there was no debate, but that “people needed to air the emotion and their reaction to all that they are reading and seeing and hearing for the first time.” She said the theater has hired an expert in workplace culture to talk with the staff, starting with rank-and-file employees.

In the short-term, she said, the theater’s managing director, Joshua Borenstein, will assume both the artistic and the administrative responsibilities of the theater on an interim basis, while the board determines how to select a new artistic director. Pappano said the theater will go forward with the opening Wednesday night of a play, “Office Hour,” and is well on its way to pulling together its next season.

“We want to be a fair, open and equitable workplace, where people feel comfortable coming forward, and we have to do the right thing,” she said. “Long Wharf is a theater with a national profile, and a lot of people are watching us, and we have to do this right.”

In a written statement, Pappano added, “We must ensure that nothing like this happens again,” and said “this is a time that demands sober self-reflection and openness.”

Multiple former staffers have said Edelstein’s behavior was known to administrators and board members at the theater, but Pappano has called such an assertion “misleading.”

Long Wharf has acknowledged that its board knew about three complaints against Edelstein — Kim Rubinstein, a former associate artistic director, said he harassed her over a long period of time with behavior that included masturbating in her office; Jackie Farrelly, a former props supervisor, said he used the word “skanky” to describe an actress, and at least two employees said (and theater officials confirmed) that he recently joked about having sex with the nuns at a Catholic college that gave him an honorary degree last year.

As news of those allegations and others became public, The Seattle Times reported that an actress said she was groped by Edelstein in 2002, as he was wrapping up his tenure as artistic director of A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) there.

And in Houston, the Alley Theater said it had removed Edelstein as director of an upcoming production of “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” a one-man play about Louis Armstrong by The Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout. Teachout will now direct the production, which begins next month.

Edelstein, 63, has not responded to several requests for comment, including on Tuesday evening. He has been the artistic director at Long Wharf since 2002 and has directed three plays on Broadway, including, most recently, “The Road to Mecca” in 2012; he also has directed at Long Wharf and other theaters.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.