the week of june 14-20, 2024
the answer to your budget crisis is not apprentices
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this week in The Crisis™: seattle rep
On Monday, The Seattle Times reported that Seattle Repertory Theatre was laying off 12% of its staff, including the majority of its artistic, arts engagement, and Public Works departments.
In the last eighteen months, multiple theatres announced significant staff reductions, including Center Theatre Group (10%), Brooklyn Academy of Music (13%), Lookingglass (50%), Dallas Theater Center (43%), The Public (19%), Steppenwolf (12%), and Artists Repertory Theatre (50%, including its artistic director). You read this newsletter, so I don’t need to recap the accompanying cascade of emergency fundraising campaigns, theatre closures, and scaled-back seasons.
There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the field’s broken economics. I know it can feel indulgent (even irresponsible) to carve out time to dream, dismantle, and build new systems and structures when you’re operating in perma-crisis mode. But in the absence of radical imagination, theatres will recycle antiquated practices, stuck in an endless churn of exploitation, burnout, and turnover.
Here is the proposed restructure for Seattle Rep’s artistic department:
The departments hardest hit by layoffs initially, [managing director Jeffrey] Herrmann said, are the development department, which oversees fundraising operations and is losing three positions (two will be added in the future); and the previously five-person artistic staff, which handles tasks like season planning, new play development and casting. The entirety of the artistic staff is being let go (or in the case of one vacant role, not filled), other than Artistic Director Dámaso Rodríguez, who joined the Rep in July 2023. A newly created role — artistic programs manager — will be hired in the coming months, and two directing/artistic programs apprentices (part of the Rep’s educational Professional Arts Training Program) will be hired for the duration of the upcoming season. In addition, artistic contractors will be hired on a project basis…
The Rep’s new-play development program will end in its current form, though developing new work will remain a priority, Herrmann said, and the Rep’s 2024-25 budget currently includes funding to support three to four new-play workshops next season…
Herrmann said many of the laid-off staff members may continue to work with the Rep, but on a contractual or project-by-project basis. This upcoming season, he said, “really represents sort of a pause and a reset,” with a strong focus on experimentation, trying new things and seeing what sticks and what is sustainable…
…“It’s awful,” [Herrmann] said of the layoffs. “Nobody wants to do this. We’ve done our best to try to avoid it, but at a certain point you’ve just got to stare reality in the face and say, ‘OK, we have to make some adjustments now to avoid a lot of pain down the road.’”
I hope the new artistic programs manager will have a reasonable scope of responsibilities, ample resources, and a competitive salary, but this is not my first rodeo. (Jenna noted the rise of multiple-jobs-in-one postings in a recent Bills, Bills, Bills editor’s note.) Managing a constant cycle of temporary labor — and solely holding all of the institutional knowledge in order to orient and train apprentices and freelancers — is its own full-time job.
By laying off nearly every seasoned artistic mentor, the educational and training component of the apprenticeship is compromised. What kind of viable career path can Seattle Rep’s apprentices envision for themselves when the very theatre employing them eliminates the majority of full-time opportunities in favor of contract gigs without benefits?
Artistic staffers function as institutional utility players. They have versatile skillsets that theatres financially undervalue but heavily rely on: creative problem solving, meticulous attention to detail, project management, cross-departmental collaboration, UN-level diplomacy, administrative wizardry and cat-herding, writing (both casual and formal, but not too scholarly), critical thinking and textual analysis, event planning, discussion facilitation (and gracefully fielding “this is more of a comment than a question?”), on-call curatorial and brain trust activities. And then there’s the required knowledge base: mastery of the dramatic canon (with specialized expertise in new plays, classics, translations, multi-disciplinary performance, international work — or, depending on your theater’s mission, all of the above), plus a general familiarity and deep working relationships with local and national artists across all disciplines. I haven’t even touched on the time required to read scripts and attend rehearsals and scout work and run auditions — but it doesn’t matter, because artistic staffers are likely exempt employees (i.e. not overtime-eligible) because cramming this amount of labor into a traditional 40-hour work week defies relativity theory.
It’s easy to measure a theatre’s financial losses: budget shortfalls, depleted donations, shrinking subscriber bases, and dried-up government funds are all concrete numbers. The true cost of staff reductions — beyond the immediate relief of cut salaries and healthcare expenses — reveals itself over time. Theatres are touting the need for innovation, experimentation, and radical redefinitions of sustainability at the same time they’re devaluing the workers with the agility and creativity to design that future.
I often revisit these prescient words from Zelda Fichandler, the founder of Arena Stage and visionary of the regional theatre movement. She articulated the tension many theatres are now experiencing in her 1986 essay “Institution as Artwork”:
A theatre is the enclosing, the enfolding of an idea—a vision—something imagined that has the possibility of finding concrete embodiment. It is simultaneously an imaginative act and a place. When the institutional machine ceases to support the imaginative act and begins to encroach upon the place; when it constricts rather than releases the flow of creative energy by its labyrinthine demands, its busyness; when the accumulation of resources, the dissemination of information, and the marketing of the “product” take more focus and absorb more power than what we are making and the conditions under which we make it, then the institution must be dismantled and reconceived along better lines.
When we say that “the business of art is art and not business,” we don’t mean that there is no business in making art (surely, there is!) but that the function and purpose of the business is not itself, but the making of this art. If we fail to get this crystal clear, the institutions we created will become blind mechanisms (the trend is already clear in a number of theatres) instead of sentient organisms, and eventually they will petrify and crumble due to the absence of living tissue.”
world premieres
Mixed Blood’s production of Alison Carey’s Full Range: The Iron Range Project runs June 20-30 at Rock Ridge Performing Arts Center in Virginia, MN. Mark Valdez directs the new play based on interviews with people from Minnesota’s Iron Range that “celebrates the region’s rich history while exploring the many dreams for its vibrant and important future.”
Jay Stull’s The Singularity Play is now playing through June 22nd at Jackalope Theatre Company in Chicago. The “one part existential comedy, another part sci-fi horror” about a theatre troupe rehearsing a play written by AI is directed by Georgette Verdin.
productions
Octavio Solis’ Mother Road starts previews June 14th at Berkeley Rep. Inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, David Mendizábal directs the “reversal of the Joads’ journey, [told with] soaring poetry, gritty realism, and mythic scope as [Solis] captures the intersection of people, cultures, and migration in the American West.”
Whitney White’s By The Queen runs June 15-29 at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, NY. Shana Cooper directs the “part disco party, part riotous post-mortem on a life lived to the fullest” adaptation of Henry VI and Richard III re-telling “Shakespeare’s story of the War of the Roses through the lens of Queen Margaret.”
Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King starts previews June 20th at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL. The Pulitzer-winning comedy “about the risks and rewards of celebrating who you are” is directed by Lili-Anne Brown.
summer festival szn
The Colorado New Play Festival runs June 14-15 in Steamboat Springs, CO. Readings include Benjamin Benne’s this man i call mi primo, James Sherman’s The First Lady of Television, Jared Mezzocchi’s 73 Seconds, and Fiasco Theater’s Bartleby (adapted by Noah Brody and Paul L. Coffey).
The Arkansas New Play Festival runs June 15-22 at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR. This year’s reading line-up includes Sarah Gancher’s bluegrass musical Eugene Onegin, Sara Guerrero’s Have to Believe We Are Magic, a.k. payne’s Edi Ya & Diamond’s Grove, Jonathan Norton’s Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem, and LatinX Theatre Project’s Sherlock Holmes: The Timbers Family File.
Meghan Endres Brown’s Bigfoot will have a reading on June 17th as part of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s First Light Festival. The new work is a “darkly funny high-stakes suspense play about sibling rivalry, quantum physics, and the terrifying power of a good story.”
Keiko Green’s You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! will have public performances on June 20 & 22 at the O’Neill Playwright Conference in Waterford, CT. The dark comedy follows Greg, who has “received a terminal diagnosis. But the Earth's dying, too, so like, at least he’s in good company? This all makes sense to Greg. After all, the world’s too big not to be kind of magical.”
workshops & readings
Mekala Sridhar and C.J. Linton’s Nothing You Desire will have a public workshop on June 15th at Atlas Performing Arts Center in DC. The event will feature excerpts, conversation and artmaking around their “modern adaptation of As You Like It about gender, queer art, and being afraid to want things.”
digital
Ars Nova’s ANTFest runs through June 27th, in-person and streaming (both live and on demand). This week’s offerings from the annual showcase of new work from “New York’s most adventurous emerging artists” includes Matt Coakley, Franco Giacomarra and Marc David Wright’s Planet W: A New Science-Fiction Musical (June 14), Kate Eberstadt and Molly Rose Heller’s Where We Meet (June 15); Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper’s GERALDINE! (June 17); Brett Ashley Robinson’s Good Person (June 18); Tank’s Mx. Piggy Makes an OnlyFans (June 20).
The world premiere of Joseph Scott Ford’s Responders is available to stream from June 18-30 from TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR. The genre-bending dark comedy about two small-town paramedics is directed by Vickie Washington and part of the 2024 Arkansas New Play Festival.
Kyoung H. Park’s NERO streams June 17 - 30 from Kyoung’s Pacific Beat. Park also directs the “Shakespearean, five-act ‘streamplay’ theatricalizing the history from George W. Bush’s War on Terror to our present day as the rise and fall of Nero’s Roman Empire.”
labor news
Production workers at The Public Theater officially voted to unionize and join IATSE. You can follow the union’s progress at @unionizethepublic on Instagram. The vote follows similar outcomes for backstage workers at Off Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company and Titanique. (The Vineyard Theatre voluntarily recognized its crew’s union, bypassing the need for an election.) At regional theatres, front-of-house workers at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago and The Guthrie in Minneapolis have also recently pursued unionization steps.
2024-25 season updates
Lincoln Center Theater announced its full upcoming season. The line-up includes Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's musical Floyd Collins (directed by Landau), Katori Hall's The Blood Quilt (directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz), Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts (directed by Jack O’Brien), and the previously announced world premieres of Ayad Akhtar's MCNEAL (directed by Bartlett Sher) on Broadway and Phillip Howze's Six Characters (directed by Dustin Wills) at LCT3.
Rattlestick Theater announced its 2024-25 season. Productions include Ethan Lipton’s We Are Your Robots (directed by Leigh Silverman, co-pro with Theatre for a New Audience) and Emma Horwtiz and Bailey Williams’ Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods (directed by Tara Elliott, co-pro with New Georges). The company also announced its new Waverly Performance Studio for new play development; upcoming projects include Arturo Luíz Soria’s Sin Padre (directed by Danilo Gambini) and Will Davis’ Untitled Ballet About the Rise and Fall of a Lesbian Bar.
ArtsWest announced its 2024-25 season. The Seattle theatre will produce Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj, Corinne Park-Buffelen & Mathew Wright’s Snowed In (Again), York Walker’s Covenant, Gracie Gardner’s Athena, and Lucy Prebble’s The Effect.
award season
The Drama Desk Awards were announced on Monday. The awards recognize the best of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway. Stereophonic won seven, including Outstanding Play; Dead Outlaw was named Outstanding Musical; and Water for Elephants took home four awards.
The column about Seattle Rep is fantastic. Thank you for writing on it, and for bringing Zelda Fichandler’s piece into my world!