LEWISTON – Planning community art and theater productions for the coming year is at the top of the list for L/A Arts’ new executive director.

But Andrew Harris, a British playwright, director and drama teacher, said finding a new home for L/A Arts isn’t far down on the list.

“The important question really is, where will we be next year at this time,” Harris said Monday. He said he planned to spend his next few months answering that question.

Harris said he has been working out of the arts group’s office since February. The group’s board of directors announced Harris’ new position last weekend, replacing Richard Willing. Willing had resigned in September after 14 years with the organization.

Harris has spent 30 years working in the theater arts and education in the United Kingdom and the United States. He’s a published playwright whose works include an adaptation of Arnold Bennett’s “The Card” and two documentary dramas set in the industrial north of England.

He has worked with Forest Forge, an acclaimed touring theater, since the early 1980s and has worked on education projects with the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Globe, The National Theatre and The Young Vic, as well as many regional theaters and community arts centers in England.

Harris has lived in Auburn for the last three years, but has been visiting since the 1980s. He noted that he led classroom projects for L/A Arts years ago.

His immediate concern is planning art programs, movies and classes for the coming year. He’s been thinking about the proposed renovation of 84 Lisbon St., however. In 2001, the city gave L/A Arts the building with the understanding that the group would renovate the building and turn it into a permanent home for the arts, to be called “ArtsPlace.”

Renovations were put on hold when the group was unable to raise the $2 million necessary to pay for the work.

“ArtsPlace is obviously at the crux of all of my concerns,” Harris said. He wants some time on the job before deciding whether to continue with the renovations or not.

“In the past, the organization has gone through many different transitions and sort of evolved to where it is,” he said. “Right now, we need to just take some time to sit back and look at what our function is now and what it needs to be.”

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