Braden Abraham, acting artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre.
  • Bronwen Houck
  • Braden Abraham, acting artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Last month, Jerry Manning—artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre—suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. After the initial shock, people in the Seattle theater community began (quietly) asking who would take over, especially since the Rep is transitioning in a new managing director, Jeffrey Herrmann, after Ben Moore had served in that role for decades.

Associate artistic director Braden Abraham, who has worked at the Seattle Rep for a decade and worked very closely with Manning in the past several years, seemed like a natural choice, at least in the interim. Now the Rep has made that official, announcing that Abraham will serve as acting artistic director. (His production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? closed this weekend.)

As Braden said in this remembrance of Jerry a few weeks ago:

We met in 2002 when I interviewed to be his intern—I went in thinking I really wanted the literary internship, but Jerry was the casting director. The first thing I said to him was, "The internship I really want is the other one." He said, "That's fine, just let me tell you a little bit about what I do." At the end of the conversation, I thought, "I don't care what I do here, but I want to be with this guy."

A celebration of Jerry's life has been scheduled for Monday June 2 at 6:30 pm at the Rep.

Jerry Manning
  • Kathryn Rathke
  • Jerry Manning