Thomas Kahn Gardner; Theater Director

Thomas Kahn Gardner, 44, theater director, producer and artistic director who founded the respected Santa Fe Festival Theatre. A fifth generation San Franciscan, Gardner earned a bachelor’s in anthropology at UC Berkeley and a master’s in fine arts at Yale School of Drama. He was a directing fellow at the American Film Institute in Hollywood. Gardner began his career as assistant director of the San Francisco Opera and later assumed the same position with the Santa Fe Opera. He founded the now-defunct Santa Fe Festival Theatre in 1981 with the backing of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and designer Perry Ellis and showcased such performers as Amy Irving, Madeline Kahn and Don Meredith. To boost the theater, he staged productions on Broadway and in San Francisco featuring such stars as Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon and Angela Lansbury. Gardner directed episodes of television’s “Murphy Brown” and in 1991 directed “Raising Caen” about San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. On Wednesday in San Francisco of the complications of AIDS.