Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company announces the departure of Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes following seven years of inspired leadership, as she goes on to serve as the Artistic Director of LCT3 and Producer at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York City this fall.
“It has truly been an honor to work alongside Maria, who is an incredible visionary and one of the most tenacious advocates for bringing innovative and thought-provoking new work to Washington, DC. Her commitment to the progression and sustainability of American theater is awe-inspiring and I have had the privilege to witness firsthand the impact of her relentless advocacy, passion, and dedication to the art, which will forever change all who have been touched by her leadership,” says Managing Director Kimberly Douglas.
Under her remarkable stewardship of Woolly Mammoth, Goyanes has been a catalyst for change in American theater, advocating for artists such as Aleshea Harris, Heather Christian, Aya Ogawa, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Monty Cole, Seayoung Yim, Jess McLeod, Paola Lázaro, Justin Weaks, Gethsemane Herron, Sasha Denisova, Vivian J.O. Barnes, John Jarboe, Dave Harris, Ryan J. Haddad, Amir Nizar Zuabi, and more. She created a touring program for Woolly, producing tours of international and national artists who would not otherwise have had such reach. These include works such as Where We Belong by Madeline Sayet and Amm(i)gone by Adil Mansoor, which is opening at the end of this week in NYC in partnership with PlayCo, The Flea, and Kelly Strayhorn. Most notably, Goyanes produced A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson with P73 and Playwrights Horizons, which garnered Woolly Mammoth’s first Tony Award.
The Washington, DC community has benefited from Goyanes’ emphasis on Woolly’s nationally acclaimed Connectivity department, which she made integral to the civic provocation and hyper-local connections of the theater. A few highlights during her tenure at Woolly include:
• Launched The Lin-Manuel Miranda Family Fellowship program with the Miranda Family Foundation, a response to the long-held practice of unpaid, or underpaid fellowships in the American theater. These full-time entry-level positions aim to move the needle on a more equitable theater ecology. Now in its fourth cohort, alumni have gone on to The Public Theatre, Arena Stage, Strathmore, Woolly Mammoth, Sixth and I, and other arts organizations.
• Brought Woolly into the Bold Women’s Leadership Circle, a visionary initiative of the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation to bridge the career gaps for women+ in the American theater.
• Co-created the Arts and Social Justice Fellowship (ASJF) program for high school students with Strathmore. Now in its fourth year, this program continues to support youth leadership at the intersection of arts and social change.
• Established Woolly’s first dedicated commissioning program with the Weissberg commissions with support of the Weissberg Foundation.
“Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is such a special place, and there are very few theaters in the country like it. I came to Woolly to double-down on its mission, guided by the two pillars of ‘aesthetic innovation’ and ‘civic provocation.’ I feel so proud of what we have accomplished, and I carry a Woolly heart to LCT3 – one that has expanded with artistic ambition, adaptability, and courage. The DC theater community is so vibrant, and I am honored to have gotten to be a part of it! These relationships are ones I will foster throughout the rest of my career. This moment is an embarrassment of riches for me, going from Woolly to Lincoln Center,” says Goyanes.
Recognized for her influence in the field, Goyanes was named one of the 150 Most Powerful Women in Washington, DC, in both 2022 and 2023. In 2020, she co-founded the Professional Nonprofit Theatre Coalition (PNTC) in response to the existential financial crisis facing theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside fellow artistic and executive leaders, Goyanes played a central role in mobilizing the nonprofit theater sector, advocating for government intervention to ensure its survival. The coalition successfully pushed for unprecedented federal support, securing access to billions in relief funding through initiatives such as the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program. During the pandemic Goyanes centered artist sustainability, focusing on paying artists and staff a living wage, while stabilizing the theater and ensuring an appetite for future innovation.
Woolly Board President, Kaiti Saunders shares: “Woolly Mammoth extends a mammoth amount of gratitude to Maria for her remarkable seven-year tenure as our Artistic Director. While at Woolly, Maria channeled her unbridled artistic vision and dedication to this organization to help drive our pursuit of bold, innovative, and boundary pushing art. We are grateful for her zeal in bringing new work to our stages, and her ongoing commitment to advancing our Connectivity, early career, and other workforce initiatives. Woolly Mammoth plans to begin a national search for our next incredible Artistic Director, with further details and search firm to be announced.”
Kimberly Douglas continues, “This is an impactful moment for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company as we look to the future, while celebrating so many powerful and transformative moments during Maria’s tenure. We send Maria off with immense gratitude and know she will continue to soar to virtuosic heights in her leadership as we look forward to all of the amazing work to come during her tenure at LCT3. The journey for Woolly is one filled with hope as we embark on our search for our next artistic visionary to step into leadership of one of the most radically inclusive and forward-thinking theaters in the country.”
ABOUT MARIA MANUELA GOYANES
MARIA MANUELA GOYANES is an artistic leader dedicated to creating courageous new work for the American theater. She recently served as the Artistic Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC, only the second person to hold that position in 45 years. Woolly Mammoth holds a national reputation for producing theater that is gutsy, catalytic, and boundary-breaking in form and content. Over Maria’s seven-year tenure, Woolly won the 2022 Tony Award (Best Musical, A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson), 11 Helen Hayes Awards, toured multiple works nationally (Where We Belong, The Telephonic Literary Union’s Human Resources Hotline, Amm(i)gone), and created a dedicated commission program for writers connected to the greater Washington, DC region. Maria deepened Woolly’s commitment to its community engagement program, Connectivity, elevating it to equal importance as the work onstage, collaborating with Connectivity Core Partners including artists from DC’s rich spoken word community, a juvenile detention center in Ivy City, local Indigenous artists & artisans, and the Afrofuturist LGBTQ+ collective, Black in Space, among others. Through Maria, Woolly Mammoth has been a part of the Bold Women’s Leadership Circle, a visionary initiative of the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation to bridge the career gaps for women+ in the American theater. A serious advocate for apprentice-type mentorship, Maria expanded Woolly’s learning programs with the Lin-Manuel Miranda Family Fellows, the Arts & Social Justice High School Fellowships, and strengthened its longstanding affiliation with Howard University. Maria was named one of the 150 Most Powerful Women in Washington, DC in both 2022 & 2023, and in 2020, co-founded the Professional Non-Profit Theatre Coalition to advocate for unprecedented funding from the federal government. Prior to joining Woolly, she worked for over 14 years at The Public Theater in NYC where, as the Director of Producing and Artistic Planning, she oversaw the day-to-day execution of a full slate of plays and musicals at The Public’s five-theater venue at Astor Place and the Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. There, Maria worked with countless leading theater artists, including on acclaimed productions such as Hamilton, Fun Home, and Passing Strange; she also produced the 100-person Public Works pageants alongside Public Works Founding Director Lear deBessonet. While at The Public, Maria also held a position on the adjunct faculty of Juilliard and curated the junior year curriculum of the Playwrights Horizons Theater School at NYU. She has guest lectured at Bard College, Barnard College, Brown University, Columbia University, Juilliard, the National Theater Institute at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, UCSD, the University of Texas-Austin, and Yale University, among others. She served as a member of the Board of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. She co-chaired the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab for three seasons under Sarah Benson’s leadership, and from 2004 to 2012, Maria was the Executive Producer of Obie-winning 13P, a 13-member playwright collective that disrupted the endless cycle of new play development by mounting one play by each writer and then imploding. Working for 13P remains one of her proudest achievements. Maria is a first-generation Latina and native New Yorker, born and raised in Jamaica, Queens to parents who emigrated from the Dominican Republic and Spain. She is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.
ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY
The Tony Award-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company creates badass theater that highlights the stunning, challenging, and tremendous complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a high standard of artistic rigor while simultaneously daring to take risks, innovate, and push beyond perceived boundaries. One of the few remaining theaters in the country to maintain a company of artists, Woolly serves an essential research and development role within the American theater. Plays premiered at Woolly have gone on to productions at hundreds of theaters all over the world and have had lasting impacts on the field. Currently co-led by Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas, Woolly is located in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White House. This unique location influences Woolly’s investment in actively working towards an equitable, participatory, and creative democracy. Woolly Mammoth stands upon occupied, unceded territory: the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank whose descendants belong to the Piscataway peoples. Furthermore, the foundation of this city, and most of the original buildings in Washington, DC, were funded by the sale of enslaved people of African descent and built by their hands.
