fbpx Interview with Gregg Henry by Jason King Jones | HowlRound Theatre Commons

Interview with Gregg Henry by Jason King Jones

Jason: What is the Kennedy Center’s relationship with DC and the American theater?

Gregg: The Kennedy Center proper is the nation’s performing arts center, and one of our principal interests is education. The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival [KCACTF] offers professional development opportunities for young artists. We say we have a cradle-to-grave education program at the Kennedy Center. The programs I work with build bridges between academic institutions and the profession.

Jason: Can you talk specifically about your partnership with the National New Play Network [NNPN] and the work you’re doing with young playwrights and dramaturgs?

Gregg: The MFA playwrights’ workshop is a really exciting partnership. The way it works is that selected MFA playwrights spend eight days over the summer with representatives from about fourteen theaters from around the country. They’re put in the middle of a community and exposed to the working methods and personalities in the different theaters involved with NNPN. The Workshop now links to twenty–six MFA programs across the country, and scripts developed there have gone on to productions at NNPN member theaters, as well as nationally-recognized companies. The program serves as an ideal entry point to the new-play pipeline NNPN has tried to create for writers of promise entering the profession. Then we’ve been partnering with LMDA [Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas] for about five or six years to expand our dramaturgy program with KCACTF. I started having discussions with dramaturgs that have been regulars with the MFA workshop about doing our part to make sure that we’re helping on-the-verge young dramaturgs. Last year we started the new play dramaturgy intensive to run consecutively with the MFA playwrights’ workshop. A long-time friend of ours at the Kennedy Center is Mark Bly. Mark has been the perfect person to supervise the new play dramaturgy intensive. Last year was over-the-moon successful in terms of what the students got out of the process. They had time with Mark, then they all had mentor dramaturgs assigned to them. Also, they were all in the rooms of the seven projects that we produced last year. So their exposure to different dramaturgical voices, and different processes from one play to another was very rich. The principal goal is for the NNPN community to be introduced to six exciting new voices, and hopefully relationships will develop from the process. It’s important to stress that even though 90 percent of the time the playwright and the director/dramaturg teams choose to present a reading of the full play, we put minimal pressure on them to have a product at the end of the week. We ask for some form of presentation, even if it’s just—and no one’s ever done this but—“let’s talk about the week and what you’ve accomplished.”

Jason: How are the playwrights and dramaturgs selected?

Gregg: This year we had eight literary managers from the NNPN theater community as the readers plus Jason Loewith (the Executive Director), David Goldman who’s the founder of NNPN (he’s at Stanford at the National Center). For the first round I had eight former officers in the national playwrighting program of KCACTF—people whose sense of new plays I really trust. So it was a really great team. There were four readers on each of the plays. This process helps to relieve the anxiety that a strong play or an interesting voice might be overlooked because the playwright is trying new things which might turn one reader off and turn another one on. So to have four readers on each play proved very useful, and we were able to get a clear sense of the strength of the writer. The readers were encouraged to look for voices that stuck with them—exciting, envelope-pushing—but more importantly, long after you’ve read this play, something about it tickles you; something about it grabbed onto you. That group of playwrights was invited to submit a proposal for the summer. So we took about ninety–five nominees from around the country and knocked it down to twenty–two playwrights. And those twenty–two were invited to submit a proposal: “this is what I want to accomplish; this is where I think I am with it.” And it’s important to stress that in some cases what was submitted were treatments, fragments, scene selections; they were not full drafts. We’ve got a couple of full drafts that we’re going to be working on this summer; we have a couple that there’s not even a full draft, but we were excited enough about the writer that we’re going forward.

The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival [KCACTF] offers professional development opportunities for young artists. We say we have a cradle-to-grave education program at the Kennedy Center. The programs I work with build bridges between academic institutions and the profession.

Gregg Henry speaking at USITT.
Gregg Henry accepting the USITT Award during the Awards Banquet which closed the 2009 Annual Conference & Stage Expo in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo by Tom Thatcher

Jason: How does KCACTF interact within the DC community?

Gregg: As I’ve become part of the DC theater community, I’ve seen it as my charge to make sure that people know there’s a pretty thrilling creative life to be had here in Washington. So, I get them in meetings with Michael Kahn, David Muse, Joy Zinoman, Miriam Weisfeld, Adrian-Alice Hansel, Howard Shalwitz, and John Baker. I try to connect them with these people and get the conversation started. And there’s the density of the national festival week is to make that jigsaw puzzle happen. And this year, instead of them seeing the productions that we’ve invited to the Kennedy Center, we’re actually sending them out into the community. I do a lot of fist pumping in the office because with these short play award finalists get a concert reading at the festival. I get the best possible actors in Washington to do these readings. I think the playwrights may be used to having their university colleagues reading for them, not age-appropriate, experienced professionals. I pumped my fist yesterday because I have Rick Foucheux doing one of the readings. Jennifer Mendenhall is doing one of the readings—actually Jennifer may be doing two of the readings—Bobby Smith, Jenna Sokolowski, and the list goes on. And that’s a great thing. I’m not saying that they haven’t had that experience of having their plays read by really dynamic, well-experienced actors, but that’s a great thing to add to the mix. And to introduce them to the DC acting community and realize that these people are spending their lives in DC and not waiting tables or temping in New York City, waiting for the next audition. These are people who have a season’s worth of shows and they have a life.

Jason: You lost about one-third of your funding this year. How did that impact your programs?

Gregg: It’s actually been an exciting year because the discussions we’ve had with the executive committee and the national committee of KCACTF presented an opportunity to reboot the organization and reconsider what we are and really nail down our priorities. What’s been gratifying is that to a person, it’s all been about “touch as little possible the fellowships, residencies, and recognitions for student artists.” So the sacrifice was we’re not inviting productions to the Kennedy Center. But the National Festival is still happening. We’re in the process of bringing 120 student artists to the Kennedy Center for five days, and I’m in the process right now of scheduling the masterclasses for the playwrights, the dramaturgs, the designers, the actors and all that. What the committee decided—and I was thrilled because I agree with them 100 percent—is that we’re just not going to spend the money on bringing a production to come into town for a performance then go home the next day. We were able to absorb the cuts that way. For everyone to double down on recognizing student achievement has been pretty damn thrilling. Essentially, the U.S. Department of Education has refocused its energies on K-12 learning, so university/college is no longer part of their funding stream. What we’re relying on are corporate support and these fantastic donors who really care about the bridge-building work that we’re trying to do. Again as crazy as it may sound—and not to say that I’m not going to try to get the funding back—it’s been a great a year. I just got back from eight weeks on the road going from festival to festival, and the fact that there wasn’t the carrot of the Kennedy Center to dangle didn’t hurt attendance at the festivals. Despite the budget cuts that are happening nationwide in theater programs, attendance hasn’t been hurt. It was up in many cases or level in other cases. So what it tells us it that we have to make sure we can do everything we can to strengthen those regional festivals and find ways to support additional programs, bridging programs, and consider when we do—if we do—what form the invited productions take at the Kennedy Center. I’m always looking for ways to expand the other programming too, the residencies, getting more people to the O’Neill, getting more people to Sundance, getting more people in intensive performance masterclasses. There’s a lot of freedom in knowing the boundaries. When you know what the box is, then you know how best to fill it—or how to jump out of it.

Jason King Jones is a freelance director and educator currently completing his MFA in Directing and Certificate in Arts Administration at Boston University. Since January he has been hanging out with the gang at HowlRound and the American Voices New Play Institute. Jason has recently relocated to Washington, DC, where he is excited to join such a diverse group of artists who call this place home.

Bookmark this page

Log in to add a bookmark

Comments

3
Add Comment

The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here

Newest First

LMDA is pleased to partner with KCACTF and also with ATHE in providing free, one-year LMDA memberships for emerging dramaturgs who are selected for these organizations' respective national competitive events. Likewise, we're pleased to have Gregg Henry as a member of our Advisory Board. Thanks for your tremendous work, Gregg! Contact us via the website if your organization is interested in partnering with our member dramaturgs and literary managers: www.lmda.org. Cindy SoRelle, Chair, LMDA Board of Directors

Agreed, Ari! Here at the Playwrights' Center, we continue an incredibly fruitful ongoing relationship with the Kennedy Center and ACTF participants through our New Plays on Campus program. Each year, students from KCACTF are selected to become part of our Core Apprentice program -- receiving a nationally-renowned playwright as a mentor for the year, developing their work in the Lab of the Playwrights' Center, and gaining a yearlong artistic home at both the KC and the Playwrights' Center. A great partnership for us, and of course, Gregg has been a generous & visionary collaborator in that initiative.

In case anyone's wondering what makes DC a unique cultural town, this interview nails it -- Its because we have major artists like Gregg Henry who are also natural connectors, great educators, community builders, and fist-pumping cheer-leaders who know how to be nationally and locally-focussed at the same time. And when a government cut-back comes, he and the KC team only wind up supporting local productions even more. Who else as a Kennedy Center in their front yard, playing nice -- inviting the new play community in for a Page to Stage Festival over Labor Day weekend, launching the KC's own prelude festival with the reading of over 60 new plays inviting in over 5,000 people each year for one weekend--all for free? That's a pretty good neighbor to have.