Theater and Leadership

We are four interviews away from the grand finale.

Or I'll take a break for two years and then come back, because nothing is ever really gone in the reboot era, but like me in college, you do need to leave some parties only to return a few hours later when people are a little bit drunker and ready to act messy.

Leadership is a word I've heard a lot on Theater Twitter over the past few. People have been lamenting the theater world, especially in New York, not having a front-and-center advocate championing it.

So what would it look like for theater to have a spokesperson speaking on its behalf and bringing attention to it?

One possible solution is for some of the arts advocacy groups in New York and all over the country to take up that task, and I recently spoke with a representative from one such group about whether or not that's possible.

Here's the interview:

ME:  I was checking out your organization's website earlier. You all have done a pivot.

THEM:  We're trying, Kevin.

ME:  How much did you expand your board?

THEM:  We tripled it?

ME:  Tripled it?

THEM:  Go big or go home.

ME:  And was the goal to triple it?

THEM:  We came up with a plan for board expansion, and a big part of that was making sure that we had might. We--I'll just say it. We wanted to have a small army behind us, and that's what we have now.

ME:  Why?

THEM:  Because when we walk in the room--the kinds of rooms we're walking into now--we wanted to make sure people would be listening.

ME:  What kinds of new rooms are you walking into?

THEM:  I've been at the capitol more times in the past month alone than I had been in my entire life up to this point.

ME:  Your group didn't get involved in politics very often?

THEM:  We were--Let's talk about that pivot you mentioned. Is that okay?

ME:  Sure.

THEM:  Previous to the pandemic, we were what I would call a funding organization. That was our purpose. We either helped put together grants or located grants and funding opportunities and then facilitated matching artists with those opportunities. Where we ran into trouble when the pandemic started was--We had people, artists, calling us and asking if we could help them with things that--We were not designed to help with those things. My boss's boss would say 'We're a train station. We don't have any trains. Amtrak has the trains. We're only the station.'

ME:  Do you think people didn't understand that before the pandemic?

THEM:  A lot didn't, and I understand that. It's scary to think that--at the moment when you most need an advocacy group--

ME:  And you did call yourself an advocacy group.

THEM:  The kind of advocacy that was needed pre-pandemic and the of advocacy needed now are so different though, Kevin. I think we had earned the right to use that name before the pandemic, and then the pandemic is here, and artists are asking us what we can do for them politically.

ME:  And what did that mean to you?

THEM:  They wanted us at the capitol, speaking to politicians, on the phone every day with the Governor's office. They wanted us to be lobbyists.

ME:  Because a lot of other fields do have those lobbyists.

THEM:  Yes, and I think it makes sense that they thought we could take up that job, because the hard truth is that if we didn't, nobody else was going to.

ME:  But some organizations aren't interested in pivoting to that.

THEM:  Which I understand. For us, it was about--What kind of service can we do for our community? What is our community saying they need? We did--Oh god, we did about twenty to thirty different virtual town halls in the first few months, and then a gallery owner, who I respect a lot, told me, 'I'm not going to those anymore. They're not productive.' I called her and asked her what would be productive for her, and she said 'I need money.' Everyone needs money. That's what I thought. We all need money and there is no money. I start talking about the ways we can connect her with this service and that service and she stopped me and said 'You want me to do the work. You're going to point me towards the work and tell me it's my job to do it while I'm trying to decide whether or not I should just close. I have enough on my plate. Can you do this for me? If there's a grant I'm right for, do you understand that I don't have time to write a grant? I don't have the energy. I'm depressed. It's hard for me to get out of bed every day. What good is it if you throw all these websites and applications? I'm drowning right now and you're trying to teach me how to swim.'

ME:  So did she want you to do the grants for her?

THEM:  She was saying 'Can you do a little bit more, because it's your job to do a little bit more. My job is to run a gallery and your job is to help keep this gallery open.' That's true. That's my job. My job is assistance, and that applies double when you're talking about places like galleries or theaters or places that are too small to help themselves. It was easy, a month into the pandemic, for the music hall in our city to get an $80,000 donation to keep them afloat, because even in the middle of a pandemic, they had a development office that was going full-steam, calling donors, applying for aid, and the smaller places?  All they have is us.

ME:  They need you to be the leadership.

THEM:  They need a much more aggressive form of advocacy. They need an in-your-face kind of advocacy. They need us behaving like lobbyists.

ME:  Does that make your skin crawl?

THEM:  Sometimes, yes. But that's what we need to be doing. Me running my thirty-fifth town hall so everybody can get together and talk about their feelings is not helpful. That's what I was hearing from the arts community here.

ME:  What did you learn when you started putting yourself in these new surroundings? Political surroundings?

THEM:  I learned that we needed that army.

ME:  Why?

THEM:  You said something that I think is so smart--on the phone call we had--

ME:  Thank you.

THEM:  Can I say it?

ME:  Sure.

THEM:  We are non-profits. We, by name, do not contribute directly to the economy. We indirectly impact it, yes, but the economy is in free-fall. Nobody is concerned with people who indirectly contribute. We're low on the totem pole. You pointed that out, and it's so true. It's so true. So when I first got in these rooms, and they heard I was there on behalf of all these groups that do not pay taxes and are not essential services--I had people laugh right in my face.

ME:  With or without a mask on?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Metaphorically.

ME:  Okay, good.

THEM:  I went back to my boss and my boss's boss and I said 'We need some help.'

ME:  Because you need influence.

THEM:  You have to have influence. You have to have it. You need somebody behind you who donated a million dollars to the Governor's reelection campaign. You have to have that. Because that will get you a seat at the table.

ME:  Did you have trouble getting those people on your board?

THEM:  It was not--I've accomplished harder things. I'll put it that way. Turns out everybody has a niece that loves to dance. A son who loves theater. A wife who collects art. Everybody has a connection to art and wants to see art continue, and if you say to these people, 'Money would be great, but if you can't give money, can I put your name on my organization and use it to get access?' Most people will say yes. Let them stay home and use their influence to get things done.

ME:  We have to play the game.

THEM:  You do. Every arts organization in this country, right now, like it or not, is a political organization. That's where we are.

ME:  How long are you going to be able to stay in this lane?

THEM:  We'll be here permanently.

ME:  You think that?

THEM:  I'm sure of it.

ME:  Why?

THEM:  Because--Well. Hm. Okay. This is what we should have been doing from the beginning. Because, right now, we are accomplishing more in getting artists real and useful help by doing the work we're doing now than we were before the pandemic. We were allowing smaller organizations to flail, because we were pointing them in the right direction, but not helping them move in that direction.

ME:  You can't ask them to come to you. You have to go to them.

THEM:  Yes. We're busy. You know. Everybody's busy. We've been busy. I haven't slept in five years. But this is the work. Do it or admit that you're not doing anything.

ME:  Have you gotten positive feedback from the artists in your area?

THEM:  Yes, we have.

ME:  That's great.

THEM:  They see us fighting for them, and that makes a difference. Even when we can't get the result we want, because the federal aid is not there, at least they see us fighting.

ME:  That's huge.

THEM:  It's everything. It really is.

Them has been working in arts advocacy for the last fifteen years.