After a bruising run in Oregon that had her traveling with a private security detail because of death threats, Nataki Garrett is back on a major Shakespeare stage, this time in San Francisco. She is now serving as interim artistic director of the African-American Shakespeare Company, having started in January, and is tasked with guiding the troupe through a leadership search and the final productions of its 2025-26 season.
The company quietly made it official in early March in a press release from the African-American Shakespeare Company. The announcement framed Garrett’s interim role as a way to “remobilize the organization” and steer the search for a permanent artistic director. Founder and executive director Sherri Young brought Garrett in as both mentor and stabilizing force while AASC finishes the current season and plans the next.
Her arrival caps a rough stretch for the company. In 2023, AASC canceled a production of Death of a Salesman after actor Richard D. May was struck and killed on his way to rehearsal, and longtime artistic director L. Peter Callender later departed abruptly, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Young told the Chronicle she wanted a seasoned leader to help steady the company as it rebuilds.
Garrett is best known nationally for her tenure at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she helped guide the company through pandemic shutdowns and an intense fundraising period. American Theatre reports that she helped raise roughly $19 million during that crisis era. Regional coverage has also detailed the racist threats and harassment she faced there, which led OSF to provide security for a time. OPB chronicled those threats and Garrett’s eventual resignation in 2023.
The timing of her hire in San Francisco is not just about artistic vision. It is also about survival. AASC was squeezed when the city paused parts of the Dream Keeper Initiative amid a Human Rights Commission spending scandal, forcing the company to scramble for replacement funding. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year, some money has since been restored, but significant gaps remain in the budget.
What Is Onstage and What Comes Next
Garrett steps into a season that is already partly mapped out. A new mainstage work by Ted Lange, Shakespeare Over My Shoulder, is slated to run from mid-May into June at Theater 33, with Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size moved to the fall, according to the African-American Shakespeare Company. Officially, her interim mission is to strengthen operations so that the next permanent artistic director can concentrate on long-term vision and growth rather than emergency repair.
Garrett’s Immediate Priorities
Garrett has said her early focus will be financial triage, staff alignment and rebuilding donor confidence so that programming can settle into a reliable rhythm instead of lurching from crisis to crisis. American Theatre has profiled her emphasis on tending an organizational “ecology” that attracts the people and resources needed to sustain ambitious seasons.
For Bay Area theatergoers, the question is whether that national track record and fundraising muscle can translate into steadier seasons and fuller houses in San Francisco. The company expects the interim role to last until a permanent artistic director is hired by early to mid-summer, which means audiences, artists, and donors will be watching closely to see how much momentum Garrett can build in a short window.
