Vincent Lancisi, the founding artistic director of Everyman Theatre, plans to retire at the end of the 2025-2026 season, concluding a 35-season run that began with the production of a play in a Charles Village church so cold that Lancisi provided blankets for the audience.

It was 1990 and Lancisi, having just finished graduate studies in directing at Catholic University, dreamed of starting a small, professional theater in Baltimore. He was pursuing a passion, but knew little about financing a play.

“Nobody teaches the business of theater,” he laughs.

Still, Lancisi managed to produce and direct “The Runner Stumbles,” about a priest who stands trial for the murder of a nun, in St. John’s United Methodist Church, at 27th and St. Paul.

The church had been damaged by fire in the 1980s; its pews had been removed. The interior space, with high ceilings and large windows, seemed perfect for the play.

“It felt holy in there,” Lancisi says.

But there was no heat in the place, and the weather had turned cold. So Lancisi rented what he calls a “flame thrower,” a gas-fired heater used at construction sites, to make the place more comfortable before the audience arrived.

From a shelter he borrowed blankets, enclosed in dry-cleaning bags, and draped them over chairs.

Patrons were amused to find the blankets when they arrived, but eagerly unwrapped and deployed them for the duration of the play.

“The Runner Stumbles” went way over budget; it cost $18,000 to produce. If not for some surprising financial help from a secret donor who became a sustaining benefactor, Lancisi’s adventure might have ended there.

But, of course, it didn’t, thanks to his passion, patience and persistence.

At the start, Everyman had no permanent home and only produced one play a year for its first five seasons. Then Lancisi’s troupe moved into a former bowling alley in the 1700 block of North Charles Street and stayed there for 18 years before making the big move into its permanent home, the renovated Town Theater, on Fayette Street, in 2013.

Everyman, with a resident company of actors and an annual operating budget now north of $6 million, will soon celebrate its 35th anniversary season. At its conclusion a year from now, its founder will retire.

Q & A with Lancisi

In an interview with The Brew, Vinny Lancisi reflected on his decision to leave the theater he created from scratch:

DR: You’re stating this week your intention to retire at the end of next season. What went into that decision?

VL: The one thing I’ve always been able to count on, all the way through my career, has been my gut, being ahead of the curve on knowing when it’s the right time to do something. I’ve had the opportunity to realize a dream, to turn a vision into a full, three-dimensional living, breathing organism that is as permanent as the bricks this building was built on. It’s been 35 years and my 65th birthday is next June 28. . . I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved [as] a very large village of people who have nurtured this company. I feel like the future is bright, and it’s time to pass the baton, to see what some new, younger director might do to take this resident company to new heights.

DR: Building a theater and sustaining it for 35 years, that’s quite an accomplishment, especially given all we hear about the difficulty in keeping a theater going now, post-pandemic and in the age of streaming.

VL: What we have to go through to get people off the couch is extraordinary because, during Covid, people discovered streaming and quality programming, and that they could pause it and go to the bathroom. They could binge-watch all night long, whatever they wanted to do. At the theater, you’ve got to be there at a certain time. You’ve got to plan ahead, right? You’ve got to figure out what you’re doing for dinner. All of the things that make live theater exciting require you to go out of your way to plan for it. And we know from market research that the millennials and Gen-Zers tend to plan more last-minute; they want the freedom to be able to decide, ‘Hey, what are we going to do tonight?’ And they don’t even have a play on their list.

DR: So have you changed your pitch to the public since the pandemic?

VL: Yes, absolutely, by reaching out to new, younger people who are already downtown, where they either live or work, who love the community and are looking for things to do. They have a little bit of disposable income. They are mission-driven people, too; millennials and Gen-Zers care very much about what you’re doing for the world or for the community, and so they’re interested in our mission. They’re interested in our plays because they hold a mirror up to nature. Theater is, by its very nature, a political beast because we’re telling the stories of people who are affected by the world in politics and war and life in all of its manifestations.

DR: By the way, how did Everyman get its name?

VL: It was named after Everyman Theater in Liverpool. Liverpool is a port city a lot like Baltimore. The theater had a resident company. What they said was ‘Here we are in this blue-collar city. How can we do the plays of kings and expect people from working-class backgrounds to give a hoot?’ So they would do Shakespeare, but they would set it in working-class Liverpool. They made it very accessible, and I don’t mean they dumbed it down. They made plays accessible to everybody in Liverpool, not just the highly educated. And so, for me, it was about the idea that theater is for everyone, that all walks of life are welcome.

DR: Having audiences buy into a theater is important. But you also need to raise a lot of funds outside of the box office, right?

VL: For every dollar we earn, we have to raise a dollar. About 50% of the income needed to run the theater comes from ticket sales. When Everyman was young, our ticket sales only accounted for 30%.

DR: How are subscriptions to Everyman? Can you tell me what your renewal rate is? That would be a good indicator of community support.

VL: Subscription renewal rate is 81%, well above the national average. We owe such a deep debt of gratitude to the entire baby boomer generation that has really lifted us up in huge ways. They grew up in a time when their parents took them to the theater. They know that subscribing isn’t just about getting a deal. It’s about investing in an organization so that they can count on it being there for all the shows. And the theater gets that money up front. It spends that money throughout the season planning and building. And we’re built in Baltimore. Over 90% of the people you’ll see on stage or behind the scenes are from Baltimore or live in the Baltimore region. We hire professional theater craftspeople and art makers from this region. We prioritize it.

DR: Having a resident company of actors always seemed important to you. What’s the advantage of that?

VL: The actor is the reason that we come to the theater. The actor is the direct link as storyteller, between the playwright and the audience. I believe, as did [British director] Peter Brook and many great theater-makers before me, that you could put two actors on an empty stage with no special lighting, no costume, no script, and they can compel you and make vivid, striking theater right before your very eyes. So [with a resident company], you have a core of first-rate actors who are skilled in all of the theatrical styles and who have a high ability to transform, time and again, to play a lot of different roles. I’m interested in leading ladies who could be character actors. I’m interested in ingenues who can play 10 years older and 10 years younger – actors so good that I believe them.

DR: Have you ever had to say to a resident actor, ‘Thank you! It’s been a good run. Here’s your bus ticket home?’

VL: I have only let two actors out of the company and neither was because they were overexposed or the audience was tired of them. It had to do with some other matter. . . . Bruce Nelson, I think, just did his 50th performance for us. Megan Anderson is right around the same number. Deb Hazlett has been with us for 20 years. Kyle Prue was in our first play 35 years ago.

DR: Everyman has had, to date, more than 180 productions, and so many superb ones. You’ve directed many. Any particular favorites where everything just seemed to come together perfectly?

VL: ‘The Runner Stumbles” because we made that out of nothing.

DR: You always remember your first one.

VL: “All My Sons,” the Arthur Miller play was a big one for me. For our 25th anniversary season, we did ‘The Great American Rep: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman.’” We did them with the resident company in rotating [repertory]. It got our first national review in The Wall Street Journal. I directed “Death of a Salesman,” and Derek Goldman directed “Streetcar.” That felt like a watershed moment. The pride came in not only from the quality of the two productions, but it was the idea of using a resident company. It felt on the scale of something like the Royal Shakespeare Company. It felt like, ‘Now we’re cooking. This is significant.’ My only regret is that we should have done an August Wilson play. I should have done three plays.

DR: You have a Wilson play coming up this September.

VL: Yes, “The Piano Lesson.” Very excited about that.

DR: Will you direct plays in your last season here?

VL: Yes, I’m directing the new adaptation of “Gaslight” called “Deceived.” Oh my god, it is so freaking scary. And then I’m going to direct “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” One’s a mystery, the other a comedy. Between the two plays, I’ll get to work with many of the actors I’ve worked with before, so that will be fun.

DR: You’re going to miss this. Theater is in your bones. Won’t it be hard to walk away?

VL: I go to sleep worrying about finances and practical things, about an actor who doesn’t have a role or somebody in the organization that’s hurting in some kind of way. I eat, sleep and drink it. So this is an opportunity for me to know what life is like without theater every day.