Lesley Malin

Lesley Malin is a founder of The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company and has served as its Managing Director since 2003, supervising its growth into one of the largest theatres in Maryland and the fifteenth largest Shakespeare theater in the U.S., all without ever taking a single accounting or management class.

She managed CSC’s 2012-2014 building renovation of an 1886 bank into its award-winning modern Shakespeare playhouse as well as the associated $6.7 million capital campaign. She also oversaw the 2017 expansion of the CSC campus to the neighboring building, creating the educational space, The CSC Studio. A pedestrian bridge between the two buildings was built and opened in 2019.

She produced CSC’s productions of Measure for Measure (2020), The Winter’s Tale (2018), Anne of the Thousand Days (2016), Pride and Prejudice (2012), The Country Wife (2009), and Dog in the Manger (2007). Her acting credits at CSC include Lady Macbeth, Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, Lady Bracknell, Mrs. Fezziwig, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Anne Frank’s mother, the Queens in Richard III and Cymbeline, Titania, and Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops To Conquer; previously, she performed in New York.

She has, for twenty years, been the vice president of the board of trustees of The Lark, a new play development center in New York City, where she previously served as Managing Director. She served on the Executive Committee of the international Shakespeare Theatre Association for five years and organized its 2017 conference that was held in Baltimore.

She is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, NYU’s Arts Management program, The LEADERship Baltimore (2018), and Leadership Howard County (2009).