Boch Center names Casey Soward as new director

The Boch Center announced its replacement for former CEO and president Joe Spaulding: Casey Soward, who has been involved in Boston area theater management for more than 20 years and is currently the executive director at the Cabot Theatre in Beverly.

Soward, 44, will continue at the Cabot through mid-October and will start the next day at the nonprofit Boch Center, which includes the Wang Theatre and the Shubert Theatre.

“This is a tremendous honor and privilege to have been selected to succeed Joe and work at the Boch Center and work with the team,” Soward said in a phone interview. “I’m thrilled. A lot of the Cabot’s success has been due to collaboration. My style is of a collaborative nature.”

Boch Center board chair Mark Weld said in a statement: "Throughout his career, Casey has demonstrated a commitment to excellence and innovation. He is a skilled fundraiser, a dynamic leader who actively engages with his staff and the communities he serves, and a creative programmer dedicated to reaching new audiences.”

Soward, who’s been at the non-profit Cabot for 10 years, said he was first approached about the possibility of the Boch job in January. It wasn’t his first overture from a larger, more prominent organization.

“I’ve gotten a lot of calls like this over the years,” Soward said. “The Cabot’s gotten a lot of attention outside the area, and I started getting calls in 2016. They were all good jobs. But I always gave a hard ‘no’ — the work in Beverly is too important.”

When Soward took over the reins at the Cabot, the theater was in disrepair or, as he said, “falling apart, ready for the wrecking ball.” Soward and his staff made numerous improvements and booked a variety of acts into the venue.

It’s a task, he said, that was analogous to what Spaulding — who announced his departure in September 2023 and left in May — faced at the Boch Center, then known as the Wang Center when he stepped in 38 years ago. There was dire need to refurbish and re-orient the programming.

Soward said taking the offer to helm the Boch Center required some thought. “The Cabot’s in incredible shape from a physical, business and financial point of view. It’s been transformational and I’m so proud of it. I thought to myself ‘Is this something I might want to do in my career?’”

It turned out to be yes. The offer from the Boch Center appealed to Soward for a variety of reasons, Boston’s position as an arts nexus, for one. He grew up on Cape Cod — in Dennis — but had deep ties to Boston. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2002, doing all sorts of odd jobs at the Berklee Performance Center “and getting an appreciation for what goes into making a show.”

In 2009, he earned a master’s degree at Boston University in Arts Administration. Also at BU, from 2007 to 2015, Soward was director of production and performance at the School of Music where he oversaw programming as well as marketing and public relations for more than 300 concerts, recitals, and special events staged each year. Overlapping with those responsibilities, he served as executive director of the New England Philharmonic, “a small, but mighty, arts organization.”

“I discovered I really loved leading arts organizations,” Soward said. He comes into the Boch Center with admiration for what Spaulding accomplished, especially the establishment in 2019 of the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame. Soward's goals appear to include both continuance and change.

“Look at a post-pandemic Boston and the arts community and how the city has reinvented itself,” Soward said, citing the shifting landscape of performance spaces. “The business is changing rapidly with many new venues built in Boston so one thing that will be the focus is the programming will change. We want to find new and innovative ways to use the spaces."

“[The Wang and Shubert] theaters are critically important to the city and region. A lot of work has been done to get them to this point — Joe and his team have been great innovators. He left an incredible legacy and an amazing staff and board," he said.

Soward said he wants to find the Boch Center’s place in what they’re doing to be a good neighbor to Chinatown. “Finding different lanes and finding who the audience is,” he said. “It’s a diverse city that has a lot of wealth, but people are struggling, too, and we want to make sure it has something for everybody, that resonates for every household and budget. That’s my goal: That the arts are accessible to everybody.”