The San Diego theater scene is losing one of its prized members. Chuck Zito, executive director of the Diversionary Theatre, has announced that he will leave San Diego at the end of July to return home to New York in order to be closer to his family. Zito’s departure comes at the end of a three-and-a-half-year run that has seen the growth of Diversionary into a major player in San Diego’s theater scene.

“I think I am most proud that we were able to make a place where, honestly, the best theater artists in San Diego like to come to Diversionary and work here,” Zito told the Gay & Lesbian Times this week. “I’m really proud of that because it’s a really wonderful thing to create a place where people can create, and that’s what we’ve done here.”

During his three seasons at Diversionary, the theater has garnered numerous critical awards, among them two Craig Noel Awards and nearly a dozen KPBS Awards for Theatre Excellence. Audience attendance has increased, making Diversionary one of San Diego’s primary stages. Once considered a gay theater, Diversionary is now seeing that a third of its audience is a crossover of mainstream theatergoers.

“I think that as we sought to really improve the quality of the work, that came as part of it,” Zito said of the organization’s expanding audience. “As we improved the quality of what happened on our stage, we were recognized by the general theater-going audience as a theater to go see. They just started arriving because we started getting the coverage … not just in the Times that has always covered us, but suddenly we’re getting reviewed in the Union-Tribune, we’re getting reviewed in The Reader — so … I think it was a byproduct of increasing the quality of the product.”

While the GLBT audience is, and always will be, a mainstay for Diversionary, Zito also notes the important role that the theater has played and will continue to play in years to come.

“People can turn on their TV and they can see all sorts of things on TV that you couldn’t see when Diversionary was founded of course,” Zito said. “From BRAVO on through ‘Queer as Folk’, ‘Will and Grace’ … fads on television come and go … but we’re always going to be here, long after the ratings drop for ‘Queer as Folk’ and ‘Will and Grace’, we’re still going to be here. We’re going to be here with our doors open so that people in the community can come to us and say, ‘We want to hear the stories of our lives’ and, ‘We want to support the stories of our lives’, and we can keep telling them back to San Diego, all of San Diego.”

This past year has also been a year of physical change for the theater. Thanks to a grant from County Supervisor Pam Slater, Zito has been able to oversee the installation of a new lighting and sound system, and the theater’s landlord, Fritz Klein, has renovated the exterior of the building as well.

“The Diversionary board of directors is incredibly grateful for the hard work and commitment that Chuck has shown the theatre,” said Diversionary Board Chair Jonathan Dunn-Rankin in a press statement. “It’s been an exciting three and one half years with him at the helm. We’ve matured, expanded our audience and raised the bar for professional theatres of our size under Chuck’s guidance. He leaves an artistically strong institution that is poised for many more years of growth and success.”

The Diversionary Theatre board of directors has announced the appointment of Jeffrey Ingman as interim executive director. Ingman comes to Diversionary with a long history of theatrical stage and administrative experience. He has directed at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, served as a faculty member at the University of Montana and University of the Pacific, and co-directed the Medals Ceremony at the 2004 Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games. Ingman is currently in pre-production to direct Places To Touch Him, the final show of the current Diversionary season. During production and following the May 29 opening, Ingman will work with Zito and the board of directors to manage his transition into the interim director’s position.