Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i American Theatre

IN 2018 ALONE, 25 INDIVIDUALS WERE NAMED artistic directors of theatres, and at press time 14 theatres were looking for new ones. Suffice to say, it’s a great time if you’re looking to lead a theatre. But how can you find each other? After speaking to individuals at eight theatres and one search firm associate, we’ve gleaned 7 steps for a fruitful artistic director search. 1. Search committee, assemble! An artistic director search can take six months to a year, and your search committee must be on board for the entire process, attending every meeting. Some search committees are board-only, while others vary the menu. The 9-member committee at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis included 5 board members, the managing director, and 3 people from the local arts community “who…

WHO KEEPS YOUR OUT-OF-TOWN ARTISTS WARM, DRY, AND fed? That tall task falls to the company management team, de facto travel agents, concierges, chauffeurs, therapists, event planners, landlords, interior decorators, medical advisors, and more. It’s their job to make sure every aspect of an artist’s stay—as long as 10 months at a stretch at some theatres—is comfortable and safe. Company management works to prepare housing long before artists arrive. Nicole Tilford, company manager at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisc., schedules calls a few weeks prior to arrival to introduce the remote town and give virtual tours of living quarters. Max Schwager, company manager of D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, updates a “Guide to Life” booklet with resources, maps, and information for the city. He also distributes “Bard Baskets” of…

THESE DAYS, WITH STREAMING VIDEO AND PRESTIGE cable competing for audience attention, how does a theatre compete and sell tickets? Well, the first step is to take theatre marketing out of the 19th century and bring it into the 21st. Here are 4 key tips, gleaned from conversations with some of the best theatre marketing professionals across the country. ▪ De-silo. At most theatres, the artistic director selects the shows, then announces the season to their staff, who have a month or two to come up with show art, a marketing plan, and community engagement ideas to sell subscriptions and single tickets. But at Atlanta’s Aurora Theatre in Atlanta, marketing and sales manager Al Stilo and his team are involved in season selection and planning, which allows them to identify…

ADAM NOBLE HAD BEEN TEACHING AN ADVANCED scene study class for just one month when he faced a startling encounter with sexual assault in acting. A student came to him asking for a new scene partner, saying she thought the man she had been working with, on the final scene between Stanley and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, had tried to rape her. Noble immediately offered to serve as a mediator for the two students, who had been rehearsing alone in the young man’s dorm room, in order to clarify what had happened. The situation was resolved as a misunderstanding, and the two were able to continue working together. But for Noble, who had staged his first theatrical fight in 1992, the incident served as a wake-up call. “We…

NOVEMBER18 ALABAMA Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Montgomery, (334) 271-5353, asf.net The Sound of Music, book: Russel Crouse, Howard Lindsay; lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein; music: Richard Rodgers; dir: Rick Dildine. Nov 15-Dec 30. ALASKA • Cyrano’s Theatre Company, Anchorage, (907) 274-2599, cyranos.org A Doll’s House, Part 2, Lucas Hnath; dir: Codie Costello. Thru Nov 11. Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberly, Lauren Gunderson, Margot Melcon; dir: Krista M. Schwarting. Nov 30-Dec 23. ARIZONA Arizona Theatre Company, Tucson, (520) 622-2823, arizonatheatre.org Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End (Tucson), Allison Engel, Margaret Engel; dir: Casey Stangl. Thru Nov 10 (Tucson); Nov 15-Dec 2 (Phoenix). • Childsplay, Tempe, (602) 252-8497, childsplayaz.org And in this Corner…Cassius Clay, Idris Goodwin. Thru Mar 3, 2019. The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus, Eric Coble. Thru Nov 18. • Invisible Theatre Co, Tucson,…

WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN SEPTEMBER THAT JOHANNA Pfaelzer, artistic director of New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., would succeed Tony Taccone as artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the turnover at Northern California’s two flagship theatres is complete, as last January director Pam MacKinnon was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater, succeeding Carey Perloff. Pfaelzer brings a different sort of background to the job: as a producer and developer of new works at New York Stage and Film, which incubated such titles as Hamilton, The Humans, The Wolves, The Homecoming, Doubt, and A 24-Deacde History of Popular Music, and dozens of others. Pfaelzer, whose résumé also includes five years as associate artistic director at ACT in the 2000s, will join Berkeley Rep’s long-time managing director, Susan Medak,…

FOR NONPROFIT THEATRES, A BOARD OF DIRECTORS is more than just a tax requirement. At its best it can be a council of mentors to the organization, with fiduciary duties for the ethical stewardship of the enterprise and an equal responsibility to the aesthetics of the art forged under its auspices. Indeed a well-functioning board with engaged members can be every bit as exciting and essential to the growth of the theatre as the other kind of director is. The following insights are distilled from conversation with some smart folks who rent a lot of their brain space to thinking about boards. ▪ Refine your concept of the board. Don’t think of the board as a monolith, advises Bruce Thibodeau, president of Arts Consulting Group of Boston, Los Angeles, and…

“PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN WITH THE topic of accessibility, so they panic—‘What do I do? Where do I start?” says Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C. To them she offers some clarifying advice: “The first thing you do, is you decide what your commitment is. In our case, the commitment we made is: We welcome people of all ages with disabilities. That’s it. From there it’s just a matter of figuring out how to honor that commitment.” What’s your commitment to the approximately 54 million Americans, approximately one of every five, who live with a physical, emotional, intellectual, or cognitive disability? If you run a theatre, you need an approach—indeed the Americans with Disabilities Act…

“HELL WEEK” DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE TO BE HELL. Sure, it can mean long hours in the theatre, with first tech runs that can make even the most confident practitioners question if it will all come together. But it still doesn’t need to be awful. What’s the key to a more humane tech? It can be as simple as remembering that everyone involved is human. Some theatres adjust tech schedules to try to ensure that everyone has some time off to rest and recuperate. At American Players Theatre, that translates to production manager Michael Broh not asking shop heads to be at previews for shows, knowing he’ll be able to effectively pass on notes. Some shops also stagger work time, so that even though the prop shop, for instance, is still…

A SMOOTH CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) system is like a theatre’s super brain, tracking patron habits, selling tickets, and enabling user-specific marketing. At the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., CRM helps the box office and Anna Mills Russell, director of marketing and communications, know when to apply a personal touch—like leaving first-time buyers a surprise gift from a local chocolatier. “I think it goes for any CRM system,” she says. “When you know how to use it properly, you get the data that you need out of it.” There are hundreds of ways to manage a box office and customer data, from using software like Tessitura, Spektrix, Theatre Manager, Blackbaud, and PatronBase, to employing a DIY-style that mixes PayPal and spreadsheets. But without a strong CRM or box office…

OUR CHANGED AND CHANGING AMERICA WILL BE majority non-white by 2045, and is already well past that point in most of the urban centers where many theatres are located. While some theatres are working to reflect these demographic changes, it’s still true that women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and disabled people are still routinely excluded and silenced. It’s a systemic problem for which nothing less than a systemic, root-and-branch solution will suffice. One deep root that could use some pulling, pruning, or replanting is the way theatre artists are trained—not only which plays are taught as essential or “canonical,” but also which theatre techniques are inculcated into new generations of artists. After all, what good is it to diversify the theatre’s personnel, but still teach them the same old…

IT WAS JANUARY IN CHICAGO, AND MY FINGERS were freeze pops. I was so sleep-deprived I forgot to wear gloves. My 3-month-old son was at home, weepy and adorable all at once. It was the end of my maternity leave, and this was one of the first times since his birth I was without him. He will be okay, I told myself. Think of all the happy, successful parents you know who spend time without their babies. I was on my way to a panel at Shattered Globe Theatre. They were producing the Midwestern premiere of Rachel Bonds’s play Five Mile Lake, and hosted a breakfast meet-and-greet with Bonds. I was invited as a local playwright to speak on the panel, and since Bonds was also a new mom, I…

Don’t Pass Us Over I just finished reading Antoinette Nwandu’s excellent play Pass Over (Playscript, Sept. ’18). I have been reading American Theatre for almost 25 years, and in all that time I can’t remember a more relevant, edgy, and important play being published. I would love to see more social justice/race-related articles and plays in your magazine. As a biracial lesbian in this lily-white theatre community, I am very excited to know that your magazine recognizes the need to feature/showcase voices of color. If publishing this work is your attempt to influence white, straight, and gay artistic directors across the U.S. to produce Pass Over, I fear you have not gone far enough. In this culture, we are consumed with race issues, yet they do not make it onto…

190 YEARS AGO (1828) U.S. actor Edwin Forrest publishes a note in the press offering $500 to the writer of a play whose lead “shall be an aboriginal of this country.” The winner will be John Augustus Stone’s Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags. Though it will feature an all-white cast and arguably exacerbate antipathy toward American Indians, the work is the first of several during the period depicting a Native figure as heroic. 100 YEARS AGO (1918) The Illinois Theatre in Chicago installs the first remote-controlled light board, designed by local engineer Roscoe E. Major. The Electrical Review will write that Major “is well known in Chicago theatrical circles, having been actively engaged in theatre wiring and production for the past 15 years. He was formerly stage manager…

WE TRY NEVER TO SAY “BEST.” Not that we don’t have opinions at American Theatre. We even express them at times, here and online (and in podcasts—please do check out our podcasts). But in our position as the sole non-academic journal for theatre in the U.S., we have a lot of ground to cover, and our default posture is fundamentally a journalistic one: We strive to be relatively impartial without being impassive, neutral without being insipid. That’s one reason you won’t read theatre reviews here (though we do publish reviews of books). And while we produce highly influential annual lists of the Top 10 Most-Produced Plays and Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights in the U.S., these are culled from reports of seasons at member theatres of Theatre Communications Group. That’s just…

WHAT’S THE GOAL HERE? That question lies at the center of all mission-driven work, and that seemingly simple inquiry also provides the bedrock for the most widely recommended strategies for getting the most out of a staged reading. It sounds straightforward enough—to keep in mind the aims of the reading and let the rest flow from that focus. But how do you put that seemingly simple goal into practice most effectively? ▪ Be clear up front. The consensus among the people I spoke with for this piece was clear: From the beginning, be up front about your intentions and expectations. Whether the aim is to prepare a play for production or give the writer an opportunity to hear a script out loud for the first time, or anything in between,…

“WHEN YOU BASE PAY ON SALARY HISTORY, a unicorn loses its horn,” goes the title of a blog post by Vu Le, the mind behind Nonprofit AF, a website delving into issues facing the nonprofit world. Le’s point: that basing an employee’s pay on their salary history very often perpetuates economic disparities, and these disproportionately affect women and people of color. Compensation and pay transparency PLAY FAIR ON PAY SPECIAL SECTION BEST PRACTICES cropped up repeatedly in an August Facebook post by New York City-based theatre director/producer Maridee Slater, in which she asked people what they’d like to change in American theatre. Replies covered the need to recognize the work theatremakers do—onstage, backstage, and in administrative offices—with a living wage. Some echoed the mission of Fair Wage OnStage, a movement…

AROUND THE WORLD, HURRICANES HAVE GROWN IN intensity and heat records are being hit on an annual basis. These extreme weather events, powered by climate change, has not spared theatres. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival had to cancel numerous shows and lost $2 million worth of revenue because of local wildfires, which get worse every year. The Alley Theatre suffered $18 million worth of damages from Hurricane Harvey. In an effort to do their part, many theatre companies have adopted eco-friendly administrative practices. But these don’t always extend into the design process, which can generate tons of waste, as props, sets, and costumes are rarely reused. Fortunately the Broadway Green Alliance and the UK Organization Julie’s Bicycle both have online resources for establishing company guidelines and policies. Many different factors will…

HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR CONCESSION STAND stand out? From a small theatre without much space and no ovens to an 11,000-seat behemoth, there’s one Golden Rule: The food and drink should enhance the theatre experience. “We don’t even use the word concessions,” says Jay McAdams, executive director for 24th Street Theatre in Los Angeles. “We see it as part of the show.” From specialty cocktails to local purveyors, here are some tips to make the concessions part of the show. ▪ Local sourcing. Want to convey that your theatre is part of a community? Look close to home. Shotgun Players in Berkeley is known for its fantastic baked goods, all from Sweet Adeline Bakery just down the street. Even larger companies are making similar moves. Sweet Hospitality Group—a New…

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP’S Theatre Facts 2017 observes that, with the recession largely behind them, U.S. theatres in 2017 were in a position of relative stability. “FY17 was more or less business as usual,” said executive director Kate Piatt-Eckert of Steep Theatre Company in Chicago. Naturally, not every company in the country was in this position, but that relative stability meant some theatre organizations could carve out time to address debt reduction, engage in strategic planning, and prepare for upcoming changes. Theatre Facts 2017 is the 38th edition of TCG’s annual in-depth industry report based on data from the TCG Fiscal Survey. Written by Zannie Giraud Voss, Glenn B. Voss, and Lesley Warren of SMU DataArts, and Ilana B. Rose and Laurie Baskin of TCG, the report gives theatremakers and theatre lovers…

DRIVING THROUGH TAHRIR SQUARE AT DUSK, crammed into a van with other U.S. and European theatremakers, headed to the conference-sponsored hotel, my eyes couldn’t drink it in fast enough: the lights, the people, the gargantuan propaganda billboards and television screens signaling the impending presidential “elections.” The heat, even in the dark of night, the smog, the crescent moon, the tall glass shop windows selling every item of clothing imaginable under fluorescent lights—“This is Egypt,” I kept reminding myself, awestruck as we pulled into the gates of the Marriott Hotel, a former royal palace. I arrived in Cairo in late March 2018 to attend the 7th annual Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (known as D-CAF), specifically for its Arab Arts Focus programming, along with 13 fellow members of the Fence, an informal…