The Huntington’s Michael Maso exits the stage

It has been an eventful final chapter.

“If you had asked me 10 years ago, I’d have said when I’m ready to go, things will be in place and things will be calm: an easy transition, an easy hand-off,” the 71-year-old Maso said in an interview at the Huntington’s administrative offices in the South End. “Those times just never occurred.”

His original plan was to step down two years ago. After all, his legacy was already pretty secure.

But Maso’s retirement timetable was scrambled when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, shuttering theaters nationwide for what turned out to be a year and a half. Then, in October 2020, artistic director Peter DuBois resigned after an inquiry prompted by staff complaints.

Asked if he was disappointed at how things played out with DuBois, whom he had expected to be the last artistic director he would work with, Maso replied: “I don’t get to be disappointed in things. I basically believe that you play the hand you’re dealt and that every day the job is to take a step forward and keep marching toward your goal. If you can be productive, then it’s a good day, and it doesn’t matter how big that step is.”

Last year, Loretta Greco was named artistic director, becoming the first woman to hold the post at the Huntington. Maso steered the Huntington through the COVID crisis, a process that involved layoffs and furloughs. While there are now 125 full-time employees, largely back to pre-pandemic levels, attendance at Huntington productions is still not back to what it was before COVID-19 — an experience shared by other theaters.

“We’re in this very challenging time,” Maso said. “The Huntington is now a large and complex organization and is, like everybody else in our field, finding our way back, one step at a time. Yes, it’s anything but tranquil.”

Under Maso’s stewardship (and that of the four artistic directors he worked with along the way), the Huntington had become a hub for the development of new works and a theater where leading dramatists sought to present their plays.

“We led the way in terms of local writers and writers of color in this community,” said Maso. “We continue to make a difference. We don’t just produce plays for ourselves. We are working as advocates for this community, as educators, bringing young people into the picture.”

In a move that helped accelerate the growth of local theater, the Huntington built the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. When it opened in 2004, it was the first new theater in Boston in nearly 75 years. Programmed with the BCA and operated by the Huntington, the Calderwood provides performance spaces for mid-size and small theater troupes, most prominently SpeakEasy Stage Company, while also serving as a second stage for the Huntington itself.

In 2015, just two years after the Huntington won the Tony Award for Regional Theatre, the company was thrust into a state of uncertainty. Boston University, which owned the building on Huntington Avenue that houses the theater and had allowed the company rent-free use of its space since 1982, announced it was selling the building. It was subsequently sold to a developer, but after City Hall got involved, a deal was reached with the developer that enabled the Huntington to take control of the building.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Huntington was responsible for restoring the theater. For Maso, that meant plunging into a period of fund-raising and planning for what proved to be a $60 million renovation of the Huntington’s mainstage. It reopened last fall with a production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” by the late August Wilson, with whom Maso and the Huntington had a close working relationship.

Now, as he nears the finish line, Maso said: “I’m very focused in my last weeks on what it is I can do that would be useful for the future. How do I actually set Loretta and my successor up for success in the coming years? Operationally, what has to happen?”

Born and raised in the Bronx, Maso grew interested in theater in high school, primarily as an actor. But he began to lean in the direction of theater management while a student at SUNY-Stony Brook. During a summer break, he got a volunteer job at the Roundabout Theatre Company, working on subscription campaigns during the day and stage-managing productions at night.

Maso must have made a favorable impression, because at the age of 21, he was named the Roundabout’s general manager. The theater’s accountant walked in one day, spotted young Maso at his desk, and snorted: “They hired you?”

That reaction didn’t seem off the mark to Maso. “I had a good head for numbers, but I just didn’t know anything,” he said. “Nothing.”

He learned, though. By age 29, Maso had been appointed managing director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. In 1982, when Boston University decided to launch a professional theater, Maso was appointed managing director of the Huntington Theatre Company, working in tandem with Peter Altman, whose official title was founding producing director.

In an expansive interview with the Globe, Maso talked about some of his favorite productions, the ongoing impact of the pandemic, and whether there’s a memoir in his future.

Do you remember your first day on the job at the Huntington?

When I showed up, they were in rehearsal for their first show, which was Tom Stoppard’s “Night and Day.” When I think of that first year, I think of that production and a production of Brian Friel’s “Translations.” That production was absolutely gorgeous, pristine, moving. It’s a play of genius. The season worked for a lot of reasons, but for me “Translations” was so transcendent.

What sort of curveballs did you have to deal with that first year that you weren’t quite expecting?

The Huntington was a part of BU, so there were all the benefits and bureaucracy of being part of another institution, which was foreign to me. But there were enormous advantages.

Boston was the only meaningful city in the country without a large, residential, institutional theater. I never thought Harvard or BU got enough credit, for basically founding the ART [American Repertory Theater] and the Huntington.

Boston was never primed to be nurturing in the way other cities were. Maybe it was because of all the touring shows in town.

But the response to that first season was mind-blowing, explosive. I’m standing in front of the theater with Peter [Altman], and he’s going “Look at all these people!” It was almost like a wave of people pouring into the theater.

Tell me about acclimating to four artistic directors. (Altman served from 1982 to 2000, Nicholas Martin from 2000 to 2008, DuBois from 2008 to 2020, and Greco since last year.)

They couldn’t have been more different from each other. We’ve got a lot of production photos around the office, and you can tell which ones were Nicky Martin’s. He was a consummate stager. The beauty of his work. I don’t mean what it looks like at the expense of content. He had the whole package. That was sort of thrilling. We expanded the portfolio; we did more new work.

What does a play or musical have to possess in order for you to be onboard with it?

It changes with each artistic director. You have to have a passion for the work, and there has to be a reason for the work. And that’s really specific to each artistic director. To work on the Huntington’s big stage, it has to have pieces that have scale and emotional depth, emotional richness.

I certainly don’t have a philosophy. My job has always been to support the artistic director, and try to figure out how to get their vision onstage. It’s basically supporting the work of artists and sharing it with the community as best as possible. That’s the job description, I think

Fair to say that the primacy of the word is a big part of the Huntington’s identity?

The playwright is central. We’ve always, especially in the last 20-plus years, invested an enormous amount in nurturing playwrights and in supporting the work. I think there’s a degree of sophistication to the writing of everything we try to do. Playwrights seem to be the driving artists of everything we do.

Did Peter’s [DuBois] resignation and the complaints leading to it make you aware that there were things that needed to be addressed around workplace culture?

If I were to pinpoint the major lesson for the Huntington, it was that there was work that we had done very well in terms of the broader artistic community, and we hadn’t extended those same lessons to the staff.

And what we had to do, from a cultural point of view, was to continue to focus on what it’s like to work in a place like this.

That’s where we’ve spent the last couple of years. It really was taking the trust and the relationships that we’ve built onstage and extending those best practices to the staff.

What kinds of day-to-day pressure are inherent to your job?

It’s constant. The burden, in the old days, was: How do you find the money to make payroll? These days it’s: How do you sustain an organization when the business model is under siege from all sides? Everything we do is so much more expensive than it was three years ago.

We’re taking more time. The Huntington has adopted a five-day rehearsal schedule [rather than six] for most things. That provides for a much less draining, better work-life balance.

What COVID has done is it’s totally changed our understudy structure. We basically are fully understudied for every show. Our understudies next year are going to cost us half a million dollars. I think we’re in a period of enormous flux.

Can you tell me some of your favorite memories?

The single most important artistic relationship of the Huntington’s history, and certainly of mine, was almost 20 years of close working with and friendship with August Wilson.

We had time with [director] Mary Zimmerman in a couple of extraordinary productions that she did. Most of the Stoppards we did were kind of thrilling. That production of “Arcadia.” The musicals, starting with “Animal Crackers.” [Peter DuBois’s] two Sondheim pieces, “Sunday in the Park with George” and “A Little Night Music.” We did two “Candides.”

The opening night of “Merrily We Roll Along.” Peter [DuBois] and I met with [”Merrily” director] Maria Friedman. We initiated that production coming to the US. And I don’t think it was ever better than it was here.

Chris Durang’s plays. “The Rivals,” with Will LeBow and Mary Louise Wilson as Mrs. Malaprop. Nicky Martin’s last show as artistic director, “She Loves Me,” with Kate Baldwin and Brooks Ashmanskas. Nicky directed Melinda Lopez’s “Sonia Flew” to open the Calderwood.

What is the proper relationship between a regional theater and Broadway?

If there’s a relationship to be built and it moves the work along, I think it’s to be celebrated. As long as you’re not violating your own values. We’ve been offered lots of commercial productions over the years. And most of the time we say, “We don’t think that’s very good. We don’t want to do it.” We’re applying our own values to anything we’re doing. It has to excite you.

What’s next? Are you going to write a memoir, relax on the beach, golf?

Aside from [consulting] with the Huntington as asked, I have thought of certain stories in terms of my career, and ways in which it might be some combination of entertaining and instructive. I said to [playwright] Paula Vogel that my fear is that I’m not going to have the discipline to do the writing. She said, “I’ll tell you how you do it.” So I’ve got a call to Paula I need to make in July.

But I’m never going to work full time again. I’m delighted to be able to say it, and that it’s true. I’m going to be on the beach a lot this summer.

Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeAucoin.