the week of july 20-25, 2020
Welcome to Nothing for the Group, the newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes.
This newsletter is free — no gods, no masters, no paywalls — but if you’d like to sustain this project, you can support me on Venmo (@halvorsen) or Paypal.
If you want to say hi, offer me a job, or tell me what I should binge now that I’m done rewatching Oz (it’s between Fargo, Halt and Catch Fire, and Deadwood but I will accept write-ins), you can email me or tweet @halvorsen.
this week in institutional fuckery: A.R.T./NY
Someone asked me if this was going to be a weekly column and I wish it wasn’t necessary but I regret to inform you that organizations are still being racist!
Current and former BIPOC staff members of A.R.T./NY, the service organization dedicated to supporting NYC’s nonprofit theatres, submitted a letter to the Board of Directors “to name and dismantle the systemic racism rampant at this organization.”
The collective presented a list of demands that included “at minimum, the immediate removal of the Executive Director, Ginny Louloudes. Her presence is toxic, abusive, and an obstacle to progress.”
The letter cites multiple documented incidents of Louloudes’s “toxic and subversive” behavior that were internally reported with no subsequent follow-up or action, once again supporting my only universally useful bit of workplace advice: HR is not your friend.
A few choice excerpts:
During the final panel adjudications for The Andrew W. Mellon Theatre New York Theatre Program, Ginny became visibly uncomfortable with the outcomes of the scoring and conversation. It was clear that many of her friends who lead predominantly white organizations and had historically benefited from this grant program were no longer going to be funded. She raised concerns about this to this panel and expressed concern about “reverse racism.”
After several weeks of work to create a fundraising campaign supporting DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) initiatives for December 2019, Ginny abruptly told the team to change course, saying directly to two BIPOC team members, “It won’t make money. The truth is our funders and our Public Board don’t care about diversity.”
In 2018, Ginny called a Latinx staff member into her office and presented the employee with a list of donor names. Ginny asked the staff member to read the list and tell her who might be Latinx based on their names. The staff member declined to do this and spent time educating Ginny on the underlying racism in this request.
During the months of November 2019 to March 2020, Ginny continually misnamed a Singaporean Chinese immigrant employee both verbally and in written form. The two most egregious examples include calling her “Ling Ling” (a Chinese-born panda who has since died) and “Ma-Yi” (as in the Asian American theatre company). Despite apologizing each time she was corrected, Ginny nevertheless continued to make these unacceptable mistakes, indicative of her internalized racism as well as her severe lack of care. On this employee’s last day, Ginny also echoed anti-immigration sentiments in an email to this employee, that A.R.T./New York hadn’t been able to support the employee in her visa application process because they could not convincingly tell the immigration authorities that no American could do this employee’s job. This directly contradicted what the employee was told when she was hired: that A.R.T./New York would be able to support her in this process. Ultimately, the organization’s mishandling of visa-related paperwork ended in the employee’s termination and deportation.
The Board has since put Louloudes on administrative leave and is “retaining outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation. We are specifically seeking a team that includes BIPOC-identifying employment attorneys; and/or to involve a BIPOC advocate in all steps of the process.”
an update on PlayPenn
Last week, I broke down the PlayPenn debacle and this week we have an update: Paul Meshejian resigned from the organization and associate artistic director Michele Volansky was fired. (A curious difference in terminations.)
Similar to the protests that led to the resignations of executive artistic director Erica Daniels and board chair Steve Miller from Victory Gardens in May, the mobilization of local artists speaking out about PlayPenn demonstrates that community action works:
Performer Terrell Green, a leader of artists seeking Meshejian’s ouster, said the firings showed that artists have collective power. “And not only the artists, but marginalized individuals have power when they begin to speak truth,” Green said. “I think it shows the power of community as well. Because as artists, we are the low people, you know, the rock bottom of the food chain ... and I think, ultimately, it shows to the other theaters that there is power in numbers.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer also spoke to dozens of Philadelphia artists about PlayPenn leadership’s long history of centering whiteness and dismissing BIPOC artists, but the article is also a reflection on the insidious nature of racism in theatre. As dramaturg Ilana Brownstein said on Twitter, “The story of PlayPenn is how theatre leadership consistently chose not to listen to BIPOC artists calling them IN, offering paths of repair. If you ignore the call-in, then call-out is the only path left.”
assorted good news
New Dramatists announced their next class of resident playwrights, who will begin their seven-year residencies in fall 2021. The writers are Jaclyn Backhaus, Eboni Booth, Agnes Borinsky, Julia Izumi, C. A. Johnson, Sam Max, and Charly Evon Simpson.
TCG announced its fifth cohort of Rising Leaders of Color. The new members are Tahnia Belle, director of operations and special projects for Urban Bush Women; playwright and director Kareem Fahmy; eco-theatre artist Lanxing Fu, director/writer/generative artist Miranda Haymon; Jasmine Johnson, artistic production associate at Manhattan Theatre Club; A’shanti Tyree, individual giving manager at Manhattan Theatre Club; actor/producer/director Peter Kim; and casting director Victor Vazquez.
It’s not the return of Hot Priest Summer, but I will take it: Andrew Scott will star in a new live-streamed play at The Old Vic. Stephen Beresford’s Three Kings was written especially for Scott as part of the Old Vic’s In Camera series. There will be five performances from July 29 - August 1, and tickets will cost between £10 and £40, with a limited number available.
The Wilma Theater is releasing an audio production of Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is. The stream, directed by James Ijames, will only be available from July 23 - 26 in exchange for a donation of at least $10.
reopening watch: 2021 season updates
A new Lynn Nottage play will premiere on Broadway in a fall 2021 Second Stage production. The currently untitled work, which premiered at the Guthrie last year as Floyd’s, but will be re-titled so as not to invoke George Floyd, “follows a truck stop sandwich shop that offers its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff a shot at reclaiming their lives.” Second Stage will also premiere Rajiv Joseph’s Letters Of Suresh at their Off Broadway space in spring 2021.
Ojai Playwrights Conference announced an expanded 2020 online season of 15 plays. The selected projects, to be developed in two separate programs, are Luis Alfaro’s King’s Country; Will Arbery’s Corsicana; Jon Robin Baitz’s I’ll Be Seein’ Ya; Aziza Barnes’ Nana; Vivian Barnes’ The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes; Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust; Bill Cain’s The Patriots; Franky Gonzalez’s Even Flowers Bloom in Hell, Sometimes; Zora Howard’s Bust; Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God; Elizabeth Irwin’s Untitled; Julia Izumi’s Regretfully, So The Birds Are; Ramiz Monsef’s The Ants; Liza Powel O’Brien’s Apostrophe; and Anna Ziegler’s Antigones.
Jackalope Theatre in Chicago will not resume live productions until late 2021. In the meantime, the company will host their long-running Living Newspaper Festival online and virtual new play development processes with Terry Guest, Daria Miyeko Marinelli, Omer Abbas Salem, and Calamity West.
Three Cincinnati theatres — Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company — jointly announced the delay of their seasons to November/December 2020 and are working together to coordinate reopening schedules based on local and state guidelines.
Arizona Theatre Company hopes to resume in-person performances in January 2021. The company will present virtual productions and readings in the fall, including Lauren Gunderson’s The Heath, Monica Bauer’s Vivian’s Music: 1969, Chanel Bragg’s Coronalogues, and the still-in-process Somewhere Over the Border, a mariachi musical by Brian Quijada, and Maverick: The John McCain Project.
In addition to Lynn Nottage’s new play, The New York Times also wrote about several plays by Black creators in various stages of development considering Broadway runs next season, including the Public’s recent revival of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Randolph-Wright’s Blue, Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man, Jocelyn Bioh’s new Afrobeat musical Goddess, Cheryl L. West’s Jar the Floor, Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, Lydia Diamond’s Toni Stone, Angelica Chéri and Ross Baum’s musical Gun and Powder, Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’, and, after a run at Woolly Mammoth in summer 2021, Michael Jackson’s A Strange Loop.
international arts & culture bailouts
As the craven ghouls in charge of the failed state that is America wring their hands at the mere thought of extending unemployment benefits to millions of people out of work during a still-raging pandemic, other countries are announcing expanded relief packages for their arts and culture sectors.
The BYP Group has collected data on 54 countries and their emergency arts funding packages. Here are a few, along with some additional sourcing — and keep in mind these figures do not just represent relief for theatre, but a whole slew of creative industries:
The UK: $1.9 billion
Australia: $250 million
Germany: $1.13 billion
France: $5.8 billion (this includes unemployment benefits and job retention initiatives that did not figure in other bailout totals)
The Netherlands: $695 million
Austria: $2.3 billion
Finland: $22 million to arts and culture professionals, $20.8 million for theatres, museums and orchestras
Italy: $150.8 million in “a live show, cinema and AV emergency fund for the support of cultural workers”
New Zealand: $182.5 million
These aid packages aren’t perfect — the U.K. one has been criticized for being issued too late to save jobs and institutions, and for not providing adequate aid for freelance and independent artists; Australian artists worry that their bailout’s heavy reliance on concessional loans and its favoritism towards large organizations, like the Sydney Opera House, will leave small and mid-size venues in peril — but they’re still better than what the richest country in the world is doing, which is unsurprisingly insufficient.
Despite the arts having a $877 billion contribution to the U.S. economy and providing 5.1 million American jobs, the federal government has only passed a paltry $307.5 million in arts and culture relief, including $75 million to the NEA and $25 million to the Kennedy Center. $100 million is the combined budgets of like six LORT theatres. It’s nothing — and it’s not enough to save the American ecosystem of theatres. (In March, Americans For The Arts called for a minimum of $4 billion.)
For reasons unbeknownst to me, there hasn’t been a large-scale public lobbying effort for longterm relief for theater workers. Why use your power and influence for good when you could announce a spring 2021 revival of Our Town that no one fucking asked for? Regional theatres are gutting their staffs while simultaneously placating subscribers with tentative season announcements for six to eight months from now. By the time theatres can safely reopen, what kind of skeleton crew will exist to actually produce that work?
There are already so many existing barriers to this industry: unpaid internships, low-paid apprenticeships, nepotism, wage and labor exploitation, and the unrelenting racism, sexism, ableism, and classism. The only people I know who can survive a year-long stretch of unemployment have family money and a slimmed-down theatrical workforce comprised solely of the independently wealthy sounds absolutely insufferable to me.
I live in the District of Columbia and don’t have voting representation to hassle about this — which is a whole other issue for another time — but you probably do. The grassroots campaign Be An Arts Hero is providing actions, talking points, and contact information for lobbying your senators. I believe in the power of individual action, but what we really need here is serious, high-level government advocacy to secure the necessary funding to keep the industry and its workers afloat, and to combat the deep ignorance that our jobs aren’t worth saving.
things i read & found compelling this week
Ava Wong Davies on the experience of watching both the pre-lockdown revival and the socially distanced livestream of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs at the Old Vic
Lily Janiak speaking to San Francisco artists on new theatre models emerging during the pandemic, beyond Zoom readings
Ryan Haddad on how theatres can center disabled artists and audiences on the other side of the pandemic
Peter Marks on the Black Theatre Coalition, a new organization aiming to increase the number of employment opportunities for Black theatre workers by 500% over the next ten years.
That’s it for this week! My endless gratitude to Rebecca Adelsheim for providing editorial support and telling me to go outside when I’ve been housebound for two days.
I’d also like to say a massive thank you to everyone who sent cash via Venmo/Paypal last week. This project wasn’t started as a money-making endeavor, but I’ve been quietly panicking about the exorbitant cost of COBRA and thanks to y’all, I can cover the first three months. (And I’m Sicilian, so your loyalty will never be forgotten.)