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Theater and Failing Up











This week's interview is with someone who has recently stepped down as Artistic Director of a prominent theater in their area.

They asked to speak with me about their experience.

Here's the interview:

ME:  How long were you at the company?

THEM:  Two years.

ME:  Okay.

THEM:  Two long years.

ME:  Long years.

THEM:  Feels like--yeah.

ME:  What made you decide to leave?

THEM:  Before we shut down due to COVID, I was on the fence about leaving.  When you started to see theaters responding to Black Lives Matter and looking at how they handle incorporating BIPOC in their theaters and their seasons, I had a conversation with my board where I was met with a lot of resistance.

ME:  What was the reason behind the resistance?

THEM:  The reason I got was--This isn't a pressing matter for us.  We don't know if we're going to re-open. We need to focus on that.  Once we do that, we can revisit this.  I also felt like--I felt that they felt that by hiring me, and by having me as the Artistic Director, they--my board, an almost exclusively white board--felt like they had already solved that problem.

ME:  Did you have any reservations when you got hired that maybe you were being...I don't want to say 'used' but--

THEM:  You can say 'used.'  I've been saying 'used' a lot lately.

ME:  Did you feel that at the time?

THEM:  I, um, I wasn't really thinking about it, because how I react in moments where I think maybe I'm being used as a token is--I don't like this, but I can't change half as much from the outside as I can from the inside.  That's how I justify it usually, and I'm learning not to do that.  That's what this experience has taught me more than any other experience where I should have learned this lesson.  There's not that big of a difference between what you can do on the outside and what you can do on the inside.

ME:  So you did have reservations when you were hired?

THEM:  I was nervous, but I was nervous because it was such a big job and a big opportunity for me and I wanted to do well, but people were very nice. They were--They were seemingly very supportive of me and having me there.  You want to believe the best.  You want to take people at their word.

ME:  But watch what they do.

THEM:  Yes.  I was coming in after a white Artistic Director--a woman--and I credited the theater for--They had a woman, now they're going to have a Black woman stepping into this position--I thought that said something about the company and what they're about.

ME:  Did you know why the previous AD had stepped down?

THEM:  I--She had said she wanted to--It was the go-to reason of 'I want to do other things.'  But she had not been there very long, and this was a--These are the dream jobs.  Whenever somebody walks away from them, you do have to wonder.  I walked in and saw the place was in disarray.

ME:  What do you mean by that?

THEM:  The finances were--We were in a bad way.  The theater was in bad shape.

ME:  Was it in that shape for a long time?

THEM:  I got the impression that things had been in good shape, not great shape, before my predecessor took over, and that during her short time there, she did a number on the place.

ME:  And then took off?

THEM:  That's why I wanted to talk to you, because--I've seen this before, and after what took place with me, I've been speaking with some people who...who have experienced this same thing of--being a BIPOC artist, coming into a position after a white person, discovering a mess, being asked to fix the mess before they can even start working on their own agenda, and then having to leave under...under some tough conditions while their predecessor left on great terms and got another job right away.

ME:  The Barack Obama effect.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Yes!  Yes.

ME:  What happened to the person you took over for?

THEM:  She took over another theater right away.

ME:  Really?

THEM:  This woman said 'I don't want to be an Artistic Director so I can do other things' and then became an Artistic Director at another theater, then that theater closed--

ME:  Stop.

THEM:  Yes.  She had also closed a theater before getting to the one I just left.

ME:  She's closed three theaters?

THEM:  That's not how it's looked at, Kevin. This is what I'm learning. When I said that--When I said, almost what you said, 'She's closed three theaters' there was this protective language used of--Theaters are hard to run.  It's hard.  I don't know if it's hard means you can fail that many times and then be allowed to keep doing it.  What other industry allows you to do that?

ME:  It's the arts loophole.  We don't have to follow the rules that anybody else has to follow, because we're artists.  You can just fail and fail and fail and never experience consequences.

THEM:  Provided you're white.

ME:  Absolutely.  That's true.

THEM:  I will tell you--I do not believe that there will be no consequences for me leaving this theater, even though I'm leaving it in much better shape than when I found it.  I have been labeled difficult and I know that'll follow me.  I know the board has made some phone calls about me.  I know that if I apply at another job, somebody is going to call up the people I've worked with here.

ME:  Meanwhile I know at least one guy who's been allowed to close four different theaters.

THEM:  It's failing up.  That's an element of privilege we don't talk about very often even though our President is a perfect example of it.

ME:  And it's presented as an inspirational story, right?  Like, isn't it great that in America you can fail and then make a comeback?

THEM:  Where the privilege comes in is that--Not everybody is allowed that opportunity and while you're allowing someone to fail for the fourth or fifth time, you are denying somebody who has never failed to have that opportunity.

ME:  I think we talked in a previous interview about how once you get in the door as an Artistic Director at a major theater, you can milk that for years.

THEM:  Provided--

ME:  Provided you're white, yeah.

THEM:  You can.  People think that just by virtue of you having gotten that chance, you must be special.  There must be something special about you.  I am always--taken aback by how the failures of men and white people are cast aside as these same people are being paid six figures every year while their theaters are close to destitution.  The bar is so low.

ME:  Specific to your--

THEM:  Just one second, I wanted to say--

ME:  Sure, go ahead.

THEM:  I wanted to say that--what you talked about when you say 'milking' it, it's not just jobs at other theaters.  I worked at a theater when I first graduated college.  The Artistic Director--he's something, you should do an interview about him when you get a chance.

ME:  Give me his name.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  You're hungry for it.

ME:  I heard the teapot whistle, and I'm ready.

THEM:  He left in disgrace.  Um, he left and--Two months later they hired him at a college nearby to run the theater program there.

ME:  Why am I not surprised?

THEM:  I had a friend working there at the time, and I called her.  '[Name], what is going on here?'  'He has a high profile in the community.'  'The profile is bad!  It's a bad profile!'

ME:  No such thing as bad publicity.

THEM:  That's what they were saying.  I couldn't believe it.

ME:  Did the theater bury the scandal?

THEM:  They did, but it was talked about.  Everybody knew about it.

ME:  See, this is what--I can't go into it.

THEM:  No, I want to hear this.

ME:  There's a monster a theater.  The theater lets the monster get away with whatever for years and years.  Finally, they have enough and they get rid of the monster, but they can't make it public that they're getting rid of the monster, which would help others be aware that the person is a monster, because then they would have to acknowledge that they were complicit for years in enabling the monster, and so they say nothing, and the monster is allowed to just move on to the next victim.  This is like--I had no idea how pervasive this pattern was until I started doing these interviews.

THEM:  To lessen that but speak to that pattern, I've seen that with these stories of failing.  I'm not saying it's easy to run a theater.  I've done it, and I know it's not easy.  It's also not for everyone.  It's also not going to do anybody any good to keep putting in place the same kinds of people to run theaters and expect that nothing can change, because theater is hard.  If we sat down every Artistic Director at every theater and told them 'You do need to make money.  You do need to make interesting work.  You do need to guarantee us one show a year that takes off in a way where we need to extend it several times.  You can't lean on these old warhorses and Shakespeare to get the job done.  You do need to do all this and that is your job, which means you have eight hours a day to do it'--and by the way, many of them barely work, many barely treat it as a job--'You have to make magic.  Do it or we'll keep hiring new people until we find someone who's able to.'  I bet you'd see a theater transformation in this country.

ME:  You don't think you're asking for the impossible?

THEM:  I think letting people get away with less than for this long has put us where we are today.  Where's the innovation?  Where's the excitement?  Let go of the life raft, because you're going to drown or you're going to freeze in the water.  At least drowning means you're trying to swim.  I was never going to freeze, I'll tell you that.  I was going to fight.  Fighting means you get loud.  It means you demand excellence.  It means you get bossy--because I'm a woman, so it's bossy.  It's not assertive.  I won't argue that theater, as it is now, is a failing business, but if you want to save a failing business, you set everything old on fire, and you start taking risks.  That's what I did and I pulled a theater away from the brink.

ME:  But the board didn't approve?

THEM:  The board didn't like it, because for them, part of the experience of being on that board was hearing their golfing buddies and their country club friends tell them over drinks at someone's beach house how great the last production of Tartuffe was and I was robbing them of that opportunity.  If I wasn't doing well in that world, it didn't matter what other worlds I was doing well in.  Our average subscriber age dropped by ten years.  Ten years.  You know what the secretary of the board said to me when I told him that?  Those aren't the people who donate.  I wanted to wring his neck.  I'll say that, because this is anonymous.  I wanted to wring that man's neck, but I would have been the Angry Black Woman so I smiled and told him that, Yes, those people do donate.  I can show you those numbers as well if you like. Not that it mattered, because I was asking them to change their worldview.  This wasn't about how to run a theater.  This was about them having a place where they could talk at each other and hear themselves come echoing back.  My voice didn't sound like theirs, so there couldn't be an echo.  That's how I felt when I decided to leave.

ME:  Did you feel supported when you first took over?

THEM:  I felt like they wanted me to do the same things my predecessor had done that had got them in trouble in the first place.

ME:  Like what?

THEM:  Programming shows that spoke to what I was told would be a 'wide' audience--and wide meant white.  Wide meant rich.  Wide meant not offending anybody, and by offended, they meant 'making white people uncomfortable.'  Because my whole family came to see the first show I directed and they weren't uncomfortable.  Our Latinx audiences weren't uncomfortable with what we were doing when I took over.  Our young audiences that we say are so important to us were not uncomfortable with what I was doing.  Most women were not uncomfortable with what I was doing.  I still got notes about thinking in terms of a broader audience.  I got talked down to at board meetings, because I was trying to change the theater too dramatically and too quickly.  Your theater is operating at a deficit.  You want to fix that slow or fix it quick?  I would hope you'd want to fix it quick.  I would hope that when somebody moves into a new house, they're allowed to paint the house whatever color they'd like.  That they'd be given autonomy since that's what it said in all the press releases--That they were excited to see what I would do in that position.

ME:  So it was all talk?

THEM:  It was them expecting me to maintain the status quo, somehow keep the doors open while doing the status quo, and act as a buffer so that when people accused us of dropping the ball on diversity they could point to me and say 'No we're not.'  There was a show we did while I was there, and there was a moment in the show that [Name of Director], who is a Black woman like me, wanted, she wanted that moment, and I wasn't sure about it.  She wasn't sure about it either, and I know she'd be okay with me saying that, but we left it in, because we wanted to see what would happen.  We wanted the luxury any other producer and director get when they're not sure about something, but they feel entitled to make a choice that might offend people who are like them.  That's what happened.  We got a lot of negative responses to that choice in previews, and the board wanted to know--Couldn't we just tell those people that they didn't have the right to respond negatively?  What are you talking about?  Me and this director feeling good about the choice does not speak to how all Black people are going to feel about the choice, and they are entitled to feel that way.  Why would they not be?

ME:  I've said that before to directors.  That, you know, I, as a gay man, am okay with what you're doing with this, but I don't know if other gay people would be, and you might need to be aware of that.

THEM:  Because you'll own that choice, but owning it doesn't mean negative how somebody else feels about it.

ME:  Yes.

THEM:  But you see that was my job.  I was supposed to be the card they could play that would vanquish the haters.  That was the whole point of me being there, in some respect.

ME:  What's next for you after this?

THEM:  I don't know.  None of us know and with that in mind, I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking about the spaces I want to reside in.

ME:  I wish you luck with that, and thank you for speaking with me.

THEM:  Thank you, Kevin.

Them was an Artistic Director until very recently.

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