Overview
- The Public and Oskar Eustis announced on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, that he will leave his post effective July 31, 2028, the end of his current contract and his 70th birthday.
- The Board of Trustees plans a national search this fall with the intent of naming a successor by mid-2027 to allow for a measured transition over the following year.
- Patrick Willingham, the theater’s executive director and Eustis’s co-CEO, will remain in his role to manage operations and the handover through Eustis’s final season.
- Eustis led The Public for more than two decades and helped develop works that moved to Broadway, most notably Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, while also maintaining writer and community programs such as the Emerging Writers Group and Public Works.
- The announcement renewed attention to the theater’s post-COVID financial strains, past rounds of layoffs, the 2023 suspension of the Under the Radar festival, and reporting about Eustis’s roughly $900,000 pay package, all of which the incoming leadership will need to address.