“Chester Theatre Company recently announced its new co-artistic directors, Christopher Baker and Michelle Ong-Hendrick.

The two are both college educators who bring a wealth of theater experience to their new positions.

Baker worked with Hartford Stage for 15 years, where his roles included associate artistic director, associate producer and senior dramaturg. He’s also worked with Primary Stages in New York City, the Alley Theatre in Houston, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge and a host of other professional theater companies.

Ong-Hendrick, a Pioneer Valley native, was the founding artistic director of Hartford Opera Theater from 2008 to 2012. She’s directed shows there and for Trinity College, the University of Connecticut, the Intermezzo Opera Festival and other professional and academic theaters.

As an actress, she’s been in shows at Hartford Stage, TheaterWorks Hartford, Playmakers Repertory Company and more.

Baker and Ong-Hendrick, who live in Florence, also know a thing or two about working together — they’re a married couple. It makes having meetings easier, Baker said, but they’ve had to set a rule: their dinner table is “a no-university, no-Chester zone.”

The two are succeeding the outgoing co-directors, James Barry and Tara Franklin, who are also husband and wife.

Chester Theatre Company is uniquely situated, literally and figuratively, in that it’s an Equity theater in rural Hampden County. Equity theaters belong to the union for stage professionals, the Actors’ Equity Association, and are more common in the Berkshires than in the Pioneer Valley. (In fact, Baker’s done the math: the theater sits halfway between Barrington Stage Company, an acclaimed theater in Pittsfield, and Miss Florence Diner.)……”