the week of july 4 - 8, 2022
how do you solve a problem like [insert theatre here]'s board
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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim
Fair warning: this week’s newsletter rivals Middlemarch in length. Can’t have the usual succinct round-up when 1) boards insist on undermining leaders of color and botching HR investigations and 2) men with no media training or self-awareness decide to speak to reporters.
icymi: bills, bills, bills in the NYT
This month’s Bills, Bills, Bills dropped on Wednesday. It’s a tech week theater parent double feature with two freelance designers working out of town while their arts administrator spouses take care of the kids back home. (Both diaries make a strong argument for per diems and universal childcare.) Thanks to our anonymous contributors for their transparency and to Jenna Clark Embrey, who edited this column as she was solo parenting while her partner was in tech out of town.
Last month’s Bills, Bills, Bills was also the lede in this New York Times feature on theatre salaries and pay equity. (If you are a new subscriber, hi!) Thanks to Jesse Green for speaking with Jenna and me about our work. I’m thrilled the article also highlighted the vital advocacy of Elsa Hiltner and On Our Team.
this week in mass resignations: victory gardens
On Wednesday, the Victory Gardens Playwrights’ Ensemble and Resident Directors resigned en masse, citing the Board of Directors’ lack of leadership, toxic behavior, and a troubling “pattern of disrespect, disregard and abuse” towards artistic director Ken-Matt Martin and acting managing director Roxanna Connor.
The Board recently placed Martin — who was only appointed in March 2021 — on leave for unspecified reasons. Connor announced she would be resigning this month. The Board also entered into “a major real estate transaction to purchase the building adjacent to Victory Gardens’ Biograph Theater.”
The board repeatedly ignores the advice and concerns of the arts professionals on staff. As staff members, we have been told to channel all communication through Artistic Director Ken-Matt Martin, and Acting Managing Director Roxanna Connor – but the board has repeatedly undermined and dismissed them. The board hired Ken-Matt and Roxanna to lead this organization yet they have never truly been allowed to do so.
The Board’s acquisition of additional property, while fully ignoring and exacerbating the maintenance chronically impacting our current structure, demonstrates a failure to uphold this institution’s mission and artistic goals.
No one can contextualize this debacle like a Chicago artist so I’m going to redirect you to Regina Victor’s writing at Rescripted. Regina is the artistic director of Sideshow Theatre, the company in residence at Victory Gardens. They explain the situation’s complexity within the city’s theatre ecosystem: VG’s tumultuous recent history (including the 2020 resignation of the last Playwrights Ensemble and the outrage around VG’s inaction during the George Floyd protests), the concerning bias of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage, and the dangerous precedent this sets for Black artistic leaders around the country:
“We cannot allow a board to push out Martin and Connor, two incredible artists who have resurrected this theater when no one thought it was possible…Martin is one of few Black men to hold an Artistic Director position of this magnitude. How many of us, myself included, were put in place during the pandemic as crisis leaders? Now that the crisis is coming to an end this board seems to think its leaders of color are disposable…
Ken-Matt Martin and Roxanna Connor have been expected to reinvent the company and squeeze out profit without proper support. Pre-pandemic, the theatre had a full time staff of twenty-two artists, and now only has a staff of nine. This is just a small example of the types of internal sabotage and resource starvation that Black and brown leaders face when taking on historically white companies.”
Some quick links:
The Playwrights Ensemble and Resident Directors’ full resignation letter
The statement of solidarity from the Victory Gardens staff (This also contains the full text of the VG staff’s unanswered June letter to the board, which details their collective burnout due to the dwindled staff size and the board’s lackadaisical search for permanent executive leadership.)
Regina Victor’s commentary and summary of events at Rescripted
The board seized control of the official VG social accounts on Wednesday, but the remaining staff started their own Twitter and Instagram which you can follow for updates and calls to action, including signing a petition vowing not to work with the organization until these demands are met:
this week in debacles: spooky action
Sarah Marloff at Washington City Paper wrote a comprehensive follow-up to DC Theater Arts’ reporting on the harmful work environment at Spooky Action Theater. Founder/artistic director Richard Henrich was accused of “disrespecting women and femme-presenting colleagues, mistreating young people in the industry, and perpetuating racial bias through outdated casting practices.” As first reported by Nicole Hertvik for DC Theater Arts, Henrich was placed on a paid “leave of absence” by the board, but still retained financial and managerial control of the theatre.
For some reason, Henrich went on the record with WCP. I’m not a PR expert, but if you’re accused of sexist behavior, telling a reporter that a female actor was “hysterical” after you followed her into a dressing room is not a great idea. There are so many “wait, what” statements in the article, like this one:
Henrich also calls the claims that he treats women and femme-presenting people differently 'completely false,' adding: “I treated [that female] director differently because we had such a bad relationship."
Why dig yourself a hole when you can dig the Mariana Trench? (The phrase “no comment” exists for a reason!)
Wild quotes aside, the most potent takeaway for me was how Marloff’s reporting detailed a familiar set-up at small, founder-run theaters — the hazards of one person retaining sole control over operations:
Aside from his role as artistic director, Henrich says he does a “ton of work” for the theater, including a recent data arts project report for a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant. “There’s no one else who has the information and the access to all of the details that they wanted filled in so it was something I had to do. No one else could do it,” Henrich says.
How can a company move forward when its whole identity and daily management are bound up in the perpetrator? Spooky Action’s former casting director offers the most clear-eyed take:
“Richard coming out and saying ‘I am the theater’ is not wrong. It’s true. This wouldn’t exist without him. But also I think it’s OK that it shouldn’t exist. I’m like to the point where this theater company just needs to go away.” She suggests the board should transfer its assets to a younger company and let Spooky Action go. “It doesn’t mean that the work wasn’t creative, but I think the harm that it has perpetuated outweighs the fact that it should continue.”
last week in debacles: PICT classic theatre
On June 30th, Pittsburgh City Paper published a report on PICT Classic Theatre artistic director Alan Stanford’s alleged “history of grooming and preying on young female performers.”
(Before we get into it, I want to note that aspects of the article’s contextualization of the ongoing industry reckoning with abuse and power are problematic. The second paragraph’s framing of high-profile abusers briefly makes you worry the piece is about to swerve into a cancel culture critique, but it gets back on track quickly.)
The decades-spanning accusations of sexual misconduct against Stanford are numerous and upsetting. According to a source, Stanford was recently suspended with pay for several weeks before the Board reinstated him “with no disciplinary action.”
I was also deeply frustrated by the observations from PICT’s former artistic director Andrew Paul (who was fired in 2013) and the article’s refusal to interrogate his comments:
Now the producing artistic director at Kinetic Theatre, Paul says he first hired Stanford to direct a 2008 PICT production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome…In 2013, Paul was forced out of PICT by the then-board of directors over concerns that he could not oversee the company from his new home in Las Vegas, where his wife had relocated for a job. Stanford was then installed as the PICT’s artistic director.
Paul claims that the way Stanford was with women was well-known, even going as far as to call him “a creep.”
“I knew he had a reputation for, you know, certain behavior,” says Paul. “I never actually witnessed anything criminal or seedy with my own eyes, it's all hearing about it from people who either reiterated stories or somebody else in the cast told them."
Paul and one other source, who worked with PICT in the early 2010s and asked to remain anonymous, independently allege that female performers at PICT who needed housing were assigned to stay in Stanford’s home, where they were sexually harassed by him.
I want to know the specific genus of brainworms that encourages a man to go on the record and basically say, “Yeah, I heard multiple disturbing rumors about a sex pest in my employ and as the leader of the theater, I chose to do nothing.” Paul’s attempt to disavow his successor only reveals his own participation in a well-oiled machine of protection, complicity, and inaction.
summer festivals
Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV is now running through July 31st. The six plays in rotating repertory are Victor Lesniewski’s The Fifth Domain (directed by Kareem Fahmy), Chisa Hutchinson’s Whitelisted (directed by Kristin Horton), Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Babel (directed by Sharifa Yasmin), Caridad Svich’s Ushuaia Blue (directed by Jessi D. Hill), Terence Anthony’s The House of the Negro Insane (directed by Cheryl Lynn Bruce), and Kevin Artigue’s Sheepdog (directed by Melissa Crespo).
PlayPenn enters its second week. The Philadelphia new play conference continues with readings of Julie Zaffarano’s Above the Fold; Geo Decas O’Donnell’s Moss and Kay’s Fabulous Adventure, Or: Objects Becoming More Distant From One Another At Ever Increasing Speeds; Nimisha Ladva’s Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel; and Ken Kaissar’s Fat Muslim Girls.
New York Stage and Film’s summer season kicks off July 9th. The first weekend of play readings includes Diana Burbano's NUESTRO PLANETA: A Colombia Project (devised and directed by Elisa Bocanegra), Lily Houghton's My Brother Is Better at Love Than Me (directed by Leigh Silverman), and a new play by Josh Radnor (directed by Sheryl Kaller).
The National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill starts its last week. The final staged readings are Deepak Kumar’s House of India and Max Yu’s Nightwatch.
Daniel Fish’s reimagined The Most Happy Fella runs July 13 - 31 at Williamstown Theatre Festival. The concert version of Frank Loesser’s 1956 musical is choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.
Brittany K. Allen’s Ball Change runs July 14-16 at Cape Cod Theatre Project. The 1960s-set drama about an elite celebrity answering service “examines the human side of technological transformation and the dreams that change along the way.”
Ashley Tata’s adaptation of Molière’s Dom Juan is now playing through July 17th at Bard SummerScape. The world premiere, gender-swapped production “sets the story in a fantasy world where 17th-century France meets late-1970s America, raising pertinent questions about class, faith and gender.”
digital theatre
The 2022 Ice Factory Festival — in-person, live-streamed, and on demand — is now running through August 20th. Projects include Jen Pitt’s Trash Body Monkey House, TÉA Artistry’s THE WEAVER (part II) PARADIGM, Hit the Lights! Theater Co.’s ISLA, XIPE Colectivo Escénico’s Acheron: The River of Tragedy, Soomi Kim’s Body Through Which The Dream Flows, Guerilla Opera’s Salt, and Atlantic Pacific Theatre’s The Strange Case of Citizen De La Cruz.
Jade Anouka’s Heart is now available on Audible. Ola Ince directs the British actor/poet’s solo work about “discovering love in the last place—and with the last person—expected.”
Dante or Die’s Odds On is on a free digital tour now through July 27th. The site-specific theatre company’s interactive short film “uses animation and a cast of actors to tell the tale of a retiree overwhelmed by the world of online gambling.”
2022-23 season updates
A Red Orchid Theatre announced its upcoming 30th season. The Chicago theatre will present the world premiere of Brett Neveu’s The Malignant Ampersands (directed by Dado) and Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is (directed by Marti Gobel).
playwright news
Center Theatre Group announced six new Not A Moment, But A Movement commissions. The selected playwrights are Aziza Barnes, Geraldine Elizabeth Inoa, Roger Q. Mason, Tahirih Moeller, Cynthia Grace Robinson, and t.tara turk-haynes. The initiative was created to “amplify, center, and celebrate woman-identifying and non-binary Black playwrights.”
that’s not a living wage
Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area and the most recently available 990 data. (You can read more about the methodology here.)
Foundation & Government Giving Assistant, Roundabout Theatre Company: $42,000 (overtime-eligible)
Living Wage for NYC: $56,718
Expenses (2020): $49.07 million / Revenue Less Expenses: -$12.06 million
Executive Compensation: $952,870 (Artistic Director) / $740,301 (Executive Director)
