Georgia Ensemble co-founder and leader Anita Farley steps offstage

After 56 years in the performing arts, including 32 leading the theater she founded, Anita Farley is ready for retirement. Here, she reflects on the last five decades.

In 1968, while working at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatrical Arts, a young woman named Anita Allen looked across the room, spotted a tall, handsome theater directing student and immediately knew her fate. It hit her like a bolt of lightning: “I’m gonna marry him!” she declared to a friend.  

The fact that the two had never met was a secondary matter. Eventually, Anita made the acquaintance of Robert J. “Bob” Farley, the two hit it off and her prophecy came true in 1975 when they were wed. The couple made their way to Atlanta and opened the Roswell-based Georgia Ensemble Theatre in 1992. 

On May 1 of this year, after 56 years working in theater and 32 with Georgia Ensemble, Anita Farley, 74, decided to retire from the company that she and her late husband co-founded. Laurel Crowe, the company’s education director, will act as the interim artistic director while the board of directors conducts a search for a new leader.  

Bob Farley moved to Atlanta and became artistic director of the Alliance Theatre in 1987, where he oversaw a production of Driving Miss Daisy that toured the world. When he left the Alliance in 1990, he and Anita initially planned to move back to California but decided to stay and look for their own theater space, which they did for a year. Out for a drive one day, they spotted a “tin roof” in Roswell and decided to explore the auditorium inside. “We wondered — is this our new home?” Anita says. 

After meetings with the mayor and City Council, they were able to sign a contract, and Georgia Ensemble’s first show at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center became 1993’s You Can’t Take It With You, complete with a whopping 12 Actors’ Equity contracts. “We almost opened and closed the same night,” she laughs.

The Farleys survived that show’s run and began to produce full seasons. One of the most important productions they staged was James Still’s Holocaust play And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank, which ran annually for 27 years. Another personal favorite for Anita was 2015’s Calendar Girls, the stage musical based on the 2003 comedy. A show she had seen in London and heavily pursued, it made its U.S debut at Georgia Ensemble and was a huge commercial success. Other highlights include Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, several productions with local playwrights Topher Payne and Eddie Levi Lee and an extraordinary staging of The Elephant Man in 2014. In the fall of 2017, the Farleys accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award from the local Suzi Bass Awards. 

Throughout the couple’s fruitful leadership, Anita served as managing director, with Bob as the artistic director. The plan was for Bob to retire after his 25th season and for Anita to stay on for 18 months afterward. “We knew that we didn’t want to both leave at the same time because I do not think that is healthy for an organization,” Anita says. 

Their succession plan didn’t work out the way they envisioned, however.  Bob passed away unexpectedly in November of 2017. Making matters worse, former Atlanta actor and director Alan Kilpatrick, who was serving as the associate artistic director, was supposed to replace Bob in April 2018 but decided not to take the job and left town without letting Anita know. Afterward, she decided to take over herself as the producing artistic director, with the idea to stay until she could segue the position to someone else. That day never came. “So much has happened since 2020 — every time you made a plan, something came along to kick you in the butt and say ‘Not this lap,’” Anita says. 

In addition to running a theater company, Anita spent much of her time learning to adapt — and many cruel surprises awaited. There was much she could not anticipate, such as the pandemic.  “It shut us down and destroyed our relationship with the city of Roswell, which led to us losing our space,” she says. With no revenue coming in other than government programs in place, the theater was not able to pay its rent and abruptly lost its contract. The truth was revealed right before the company’s spring 2023 production of Bright Star.

Luckily, Anita was able to reach out to Cobb County and forge a partnership with the Jennie T. Anderson Theatre, which would become their new home. Yet she didn’t have the time or luxury to build the audience. “We were a little naïve, thinking most of our Roswell folks who had been with us some 30 years would follow us to Cobb,” she says.  

Unfortunately, that was not the case. The company literally went from 3,100 subscribers pre-pandemic to 1,500 when it reopened to just 500 when it made the transition to Cobb County for the first Georgia Ensemble staging there — Wait Until Dark. That wasn’t financially sustainable, and, in early 2024, the board decided to postpone the remainder of its 2023-2024 season.

Anita knew a while ago that her time with the company was coming to a close and that she would soon make an announcement, but a health scare expedited the decision. At the end of 2023, she was diagnosed with cancer after a routine colonoscopy.  She calls herself “healthy” after recent surgery, but it was a wake-up call, and she did everything she could beforehand to get her colleagues ready to take the reins. “I’m a firm believer that everything happens when it is supposed to happen, and maybe this was the kick in the butt I needed.”

Crowe, Anita’s daughter, joined the Georgia Ensemble staff in 2009 and became education director in 2011. Nepotism was no factor in her hiring, however. 

“Everything Laurel has done in her career, she has earned,” Anita says, remembering having to call her own daughter and tell her she wasn’t right for the job the first time she applied. 

While Anita is still on the board and will remain so, she let others make the decision to appoint Crowe to the interim artistic director role. For now, Crowe will work on steadying the ship. Upcoming programming — to be announced this summer — will include educational productions, travel team portable shows and mainstage offerings for family audiences. Crowe will also use the time to determine if the job is one she wants to actively pursue. 

Georgia Ensemble Theatre will honor Anita’s career with an open house retirement party this fall. During her time with the company, she was known as a fierce advocate for the arts, as well as someone who took care of her cast mates and crew, cooking for them every weekend. “They were family,” she says of the hundreds of artists who have worked with the Farleys.  

With Crowe in her new role and Anita still on the board, it will be almost impossible to escape theater talk altogether. As mother and daughter, though, the pair appreciates the value of non-work-related time, and Anita is looking forward to those quieter moments away from the office, focusing on some of her hobbies and not having to make decisions.  “I am not young anymore — and I think it’s time to turn it over to the young’uns,” she says. 

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.