Leadership

Executive Artistic Director //
EMILY COMISAR

Emily joined the staff of OKC Rep in September 2022 as the Director of Development and moved into the role of Managing Director in July 2023. In July 2024, she will assume the role of Executive Artistic Director, following the departure of outgoing Artistic Director, Kelly Kerwin. Prior to joining OKC Rep, she worked in the Development Department at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma.

Before moving to Oklahoma City in 2020, Emily worked in New York City as a Development Consultant and Fundraiser for performing arts companies such as MCC Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Little Orchestra Society. She was the General & Company Manager for the commercial off-Broadway world premiere of The View Upstairs and has independently produced staged readings and full productions of dozens of new plays.

Emily is also a practicing playwright. Her short works have appeared as part of reading series produced by Lone Star Theatre Co., The PlayGround Experiment, aWe Creative Group, and New York Madness. Her full-length work includes Dumpster Fire (She NYC Festival 2018), Undrown’d: Seeking Asylum (co-written with Benita de Wit, Columbia Stages), Switzerland (Lone Star Theatre Co.), Moonlighting (Lone Star Theatre Co.), and Track Twelve(FringeNYC). She is also a frequent participant in events at OKC's own Fringe Festival, Theatre Crude.

Emily has a Bachelor of Arts in Performance Studies from the Northwestern University School of Communications, with specialties in critical studies, adaptation of narrative for the stage, and multimedia performance. She also holds a Master of Arts in Italian Language and Media from Middlebury College and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Management & Producing from Columbia University. She is currently a member of the faculty for the University of Oklahoma Online MA in Arts Management program.

Emily Comisar

Board President //
CLIFFORD HUDSON

Clifford Hudson spent 35 years of his career at Sonic Corp., an Oklahoma City-based, publicly held company that owns, operates and franchises SONIC Drive-In restaurants. Most recently, he was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of this public company with more than 3,500 franchised and company-operated drive-in restaurants. He left the company upon its sale in December 2018 and joined the law firm Crowe & Dunlevy as Of Counsel in the firm’s Oklahoma City office.

Hudson graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in History, from which he also received in 2011 an honorary doctoral degree in humane letters. He holds a J.D. from Georgetown University, where he served as Chair of the Board of Visitors from 2013-2016. In 2014, Georgetown University awarded him the John Carroll Award, its highest alumni recognition.

Hudson served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a presidential appointment, from 1994-2001. He served as Chairman of the Oklahoma City School Board from 2001-2008, a position created in 2000 as part of a $530 million turnaround of a 40,000 student, inner-city Oklahoma City Public School system, for which he received the 2012 David T. Kearns Award for Excellence and Innovation in Education. He served as Trustee of the Ford Foundation (New York) from 2006-2017 and is a past Chair of the Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.