When Campbell Robertson, an arts reporter from The New York Times, heard about Stratford’s appointment of three artistic directors—Marti Maraden, Des McAnuff and Don Shipley—in the spring of 2006, he had some doubts the novel arrangement would work. “All good artistic directors have egos,” he says. “That’s what makes them good.” So he decided to keep tabs on developments at the small-town Shakespearean festival. For a time, on the surface at least, things seemed to be working. When the trio’s first season (just now unfolding) was announced, he scheduled a visit to Stratford to write a piece about the pros and cons of the three-headed leadership. Unbeknownst to him, his trip would precipitate a crisis that is still shaking Canada’s premiere arts organization.

Robertson arrived on a Monday in early March and immediately sensed that something was off. He spent most of the next day being shepherded about on a tour. He saw the costume department, the set workshop. He had what he calls a “weird lunch” with McAnuff and Antoni Cimolino, the festival’s general director, during which neither of them said much. When he asked after the absent Shipley and Maraden, he was told the flu was going around. Cimolino gave him less time than he expected, and something was clearly bothering McAnuff, whom Robertson knew from New York as being a straight shooter with the press.

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the four principals were scrambling to sort out what Stratford locals are calling “the drama behind the drama.” That evening, McAnuff and Shipley went to dinner to try to smooth over the differences that had divided the threesome but made no headway.

The next morning, Robertson again asked after Shipley and Maraden, telling the festival’s publicist that he wasn’t going to write anything without speaking to everybody. This time he was told they were all distracted by the possible withdrawal of Anika Noni Rose from Caesar and Cleopatra, in which she was to have starred with Christopher Plummer. (As of late April, her appearance was still up in the air.)

Finally, on Thursday, when he was back in New York, Robertson got a call informing him that Shipley and Maraden were resigning. He wasn’t happy about being duped. “I understand that there was a crisis and they were trying to keep it quiet, but don’t tell the reporter they have the flu.” His piece was a top story in the arts section of the next day’s Times, and it played large in the Toronto dailies that weekend.

Upon hearing the news, Richard Monette, Stratford’s former artistic director, acerbically told Robertson, “The theatre is not a democracy.” But beyond the obvious difficulties of running a company by committee was the fact that the people involved—Maraden and Shipley on one side, Cimolino and McAnuff on the other—had fundamentally divergent views on the direction of the festival. The former two are connected to Stratford’s past as a somewhat staid repertory company, while the latter faction—and particularly McAnuff—seems eager to give the festival a more blockbuster-driven, internationally focused future.

The appointment of three artistic directors had been something of a compromise. In the search to replace Monette, no individual—at least no one of the calibre the board wanted—could be persuaded to relocate to Stratford full-time. Certainly, Canadian expat McAnuff—who was among the top candidates from the get-go and had been approached about working at the festival twice before—couldn’t be convinced to give up his busy directing and producing career in the U.S. to return to the country of his youth.

But Stratford did have Antoni Cimolino. The 47-year-old had spent his whole career there, starting as an actor in the late 1980s—he played Romeo and Laertes—before becoming a director and then Monette’s chief deputy. He’s a hard-working, financially prudent manager intimately acquainted with the festival’s complexities, though he’s more left brain than right, and a tad square. (To draw young people to the festival, his idea was to have the Barenaked Ladies compose a score for his 2005 production of As You Like It.) So when the board decided to take a chance on an unusual triple appointment, Cimolino was the safety net. Why not keep him around, the thinking went. The top-tier artistic leaders could conjure up interesting projects while Cimolino ensured the festival’s trains ran on time. In April 2006, he was appointed general director—Stratford’s chief administrator.