The Artistic Caucus: Year Two

1. Introduction
2. The Second-Year Plan
3. The Readers
4. The Think Tank
5. Takeaways and Learnings
6. The Future

Introduction*

This report describes the second year of the Artistic Caucus, a collaborative initiative between Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Building on its first-year learnings, the program sought to disrupt traditional season planning models by assembling a diverse, two-part collective of freelance artists: one to evaluate new work and the other to act as a brain trust for ideation, large-scale visioning, and artistic development.

As I wrote in a report on the inaugural Artistic Caucus, the first iteration yielded meaningful artistic relationships, space for deep-thinking and long-range planning, and expanded relational circles for each institution. But there were extensive bandwidth struggles from both the booked-and-busy Caucus members and the artistic staffers (self-named “the Cuatro”) tasked with administering the program: Annalisa Dias, director of artistic innovation and partnerships at Baltimore Center Stage; Sonia Fernandez, director of new work at Woolly Mammoth; Kate Moore Heaney, artistic associate (literary) at Long Wharf; and Becks Redman, associate artistic director of Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

There were other looming complications, both known and unforeseen: the ongoing financial crunch of pandemic recovery, the limited participation and availability of the four artistic directors (and all of their eventual departures), and the conclusion of the two multi-year grants from the Mellon and Doris Duke Foundations that funded the program.

Heading into the second and final year of the program, the question facing the group was this: Could a reworked Artistic Caucus sustainably integrate into the workflows and budgets of each theatre, while still providing freelance artists with access and compensation? 

The Second-Year Plan*

The Cuatro pitched a reworked structure and distribution of labor. Instead of one collective focused on advocacy, scouting, big-picture thinking, and script reading, the Caucus was split into two groups: The Think Tank and the Readers. The theatres would jointly hire five Think Tank members—freelance artists from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies—available to any institution for thought partnership, ideation, and artistic planning support. Each theatre would also hire two Readers (eight total) to evaluate new work from all four companies, with reports shared across the group. The collaborative system aimed to disrupt the gatekeeping that typically isolates theatres from one another.

Individual fees were reduced (reflecting the decreased scope of labor) from the program’s first year. Think Tank members received a monthly $400 retainer for no more than two meetings per month, while Readers received $25 per script report for up to four plays a month.

Readers were also invited to attend a quarterly Zoom meeting to discuss plays directly with the Cuatro. Readers were paid for their attendance at these optional virtual gatherings. Several virtual happy hours were scheduled as well, to provide loose socializing, interaction between the readers and Think Tank members, and opportunities to connect with the artistic directors in a casual setting. The Cuatro continued to meet separately on a weekly basis for agenda planning and scheduling.

Applications opened in August 2022, and interviews were conducted over a three-week period in September. (Due to the compressed timeline, the artistic directors did not participate in the interview process but were consulted on final decisions.) In late September, the theatres selected the inaugural Think Tank members: L M Feldman, NSangou Njikam, Zharia O’Neal, Reynaldo Piniella, and DeLanna Studi.

The new cohort, geographically split between the coasts, represented multiple artistic mediums. Afro-Caribbean playwright, poet, and storyteller O’Neal lived in Los Angeles. Studi—a Cherokee actress, playwright, and activist—also resided in Los Angeles, where she was the artistic director of Native Voices at the Autry. Feldman, a playwright, deviser, and contemporary circus artist, lived in Philadelphia. Actor, writer, and educator Piniella resided in his native East Brooklyn. Based in New York City, Njikam drew from hip-hop, poetry, and West African performance in his work as a playwright and actor.

There was a wider geographic diversity among the readers, who were spread across five states, Puerto Rico, and South Korea. The Cuatro selected nine readers: Alexa Derman, Liana Irvine, é boylan, Jihye Kim, Kaeli Meno, Jacob Juntunen, Nirvania Quesada, Jordan Ealey, and Elinor Vanderburg.

The joint orientation process began in late October 2022. In response to the previous Caucus’s feedback, the Cuatro constructed a robust orientation plan with increased institutional context and clearer deliverables. The first meeting provided background on the program, with the Cuatro candidly sharing context for each theatre: mission, values, programming, current capacity, and financial challenges. The Think Tank and the Readers then split into breakout rooms to discuss the nitty-gritty details of their groups.

The Readers*

In the Readers’ orientation, Annalisa Dias and Kate Moore Heaney talked through assignments, invoicing, and reporting. Each script would be read by two people in order to get multiple viewpoints. As script reading is a solitary act, the Cuatro wanted to provide opportunities for community, reflection, and relationship-building. They scheduled four optional virtual meetings for Readers to discuss assignments, share recommendations, and ask questions.

The quarterly meetups were held in November, January, March, and May. The first one was driven by in-depth institutional questions. The Readers had varying levels of familiarity with the theatres and wanted more detailed information on their audiences, new work programs, and season planning goals. The Cuatro provided additional context but also want the Readers’ outside perspectives clouded or compromised by institutional expectations. As Becks Redman said, “We want to break the traditional structure of how we program work. Don’t worry if it’s a ‘mainstage’ play. We want you to put projects and artists on our radar that excite you.” 

The Cuatro encouraged the Readers to frame these conversations as book club meetings, and assigned scripts to small groups, rather than duos, to foster more robust discussion. While the Readers embraced format changes, some thought the theatres never articulated the deliverables. As one participant wrote in a post-Caucus survey: “I sometimes felt an expectation to repeat, summarize, or elaborate on script reports, but I couldn't gauge whether or not the Cuatro wanted us to present that information for them or for our fellow readers…These meetings became more focused over the course of the program, but I was still never clear on how to be most helpful (and to whom).”

How could the program create a mutually beneficial partnership between artists and institutions?

The reduced assignment structure—readers reviewed a maximum of four scripts per month— didn’t always yield an equitable workload. “Some of our ‘scripts’ were blueprints, drafts, or excerpts, while others were well over one hundred pages of material,” explained one Reader. “The vast difference between the time needed to read and respond to these materials felt difficult to manage…If the rate [$25] suggested we spend an hour on each submission, I easily tripled that amount of time per script.”

Despite the program’s imperfections, the Readers admired the four theatres’ commitment to resource-sharing and developing alternative pipelines to combat field-wide gatekeeping. The final two meetings incorporated time for Readers to advocate for other plays they read, as well as work they’d read or seen outside of their assignments. This was unanimously cited as one of the valuable aspects of the program, along with forging relationships with other artists and the Cuatro. “This operated so differently from any other script reading experience I have had—but in a good way,” reflected one participant. “In theatre, you're always yearning for connection and instead of working in isolation, we got to connect with each other.”

The Think Tank*

The Think Tank launched with a wide-ranging brainstorm of possible discussion topics for the coming months. The artists posed big questions about place-making, labor, and collaboration, ranging from relational (“How can a theatre be responsive to its immediate community?”) to financial (“What can be done to create a livelihood for artists? What is fair compensation?”) to existential (“When does an institution die?”). The Think Tank also considered its purpose and potential for reciprocity: How could the program create a mutually beneficial partnership between artists and institutions?

For the Think Tank’s first official meeting, the Cuatro used those questions and musings to focus on rapid response theatre: What were ways for theatres to engage with the present moment, given that plays can take years to develop? The discussion veered into institutional roadblocks around bandwidth and finances, as the artists were curious about the four theatres’ inner-workings and existing challenges. The transparency provided useful context for the Think Tank. But in a post-meeting check-in, one Cuatro member noted the conversational imbalance between visioning and barriers: “So many of the Think Tank’s suggestions circled back to one of us identifying the obstacles. What if we tackled small, actionable changes?”

As new waves of layoffs and emergency fundraising campaigns broke at theatres across the country, the group discussed creating abundance in times of scarcity, brainstorming ways theatres could support local artists in their communities despite limited resources.

After two meetings of general musings on field-wide issues, The Cuatro wanted to activate the conversation with specific tasks and questions. Moore Heaney and Dias asked the Think Tank for thought partnership around Long Wharf’s community engagement activities and Baltimore Center Stage’s upcoming multidisciplinary, eco-driven initiative about the Chesapeake Bay watershed region. The December meeting focused on devising equitable new work processes. The group envisioned best practices for bespoke, artist-led experiences, rather than one-size-fits-all opportunities. Strategies included increased compensation for workshops, productions, and development time; centering artist needs with timelines, staffing, and resources; and earlier involvement with community partners. (The Cuatro sustained this imaginative space by not responding with potential institutional challenges.)

In January, the Cuatro experimented with the meeting framework, switching to a game called “If I Were an Artistic Director,” to match visions with creative problem-solving and practical execution. The Cuatro asked questions from the point of view of various institutional stakeholders: marketing and development staff, board members, community partners, and audience members. Assuming the role of an artistic director, the Think Tank members pitched ideas, priorities, and initiatives for a theatre company.

Many scenarios presented financial obstacles: one Think Tanker pitched a moratorium on annual productions of A Christmas Carol, to be replaced by a commissioned new work every year. (A Cuatro member, posing as a managing director, asked how the theatre would recoup that lost revenue and accommodate patrons who value the Dickens classic as a holiday tradition.) Other ideas yielded expansive thinking about values in action: After a Think Tank “artistic director” proposed land acknowledgments beyond written or verbal statements, the group discussed lobby displays and other strategies to activate the theatre’s physical spaces. “The game was useful because it allowed us to dream and it set up solutions and rebuttals,” recounted one Think Tank member.

The structural tweak and renewed emphasis on concrete asks peaked in March, yielding the Think Tank’s most productive conversation. As new waves of layoffs and emergency fundraising campaigns broke at theatres across the country, the group discussed creating abundance in times of scarcity, brainstorming ways theatres could support local artists in their communities despite limited resources.

The Think Tank generated a robust mix of immediate actions and long-term proposals: informal new work development and barebones production opportunities, complimentary rehearsal or writing space, mid-career mentorship and strategic career planning services, and assorted assistance ranging from sponsoring industry subscriptions and transit passes, printer access, immigration consultation, and repurposing facilities for civic purposes, like a food pantry. L M Feldman pitched an Artist Fleet: a flexible creative workforce model where theatres employ local artists for five to ten hours per week across diverse organizational projects, from administrative support to creative development and targeted think tanks.

The mix of suggestions and initiatives invigorated the Cuatro, who were fatigued by both the nationwide crisis discourse within the industry and looming personnel changes at their own institutions. It also energized the Think Tank. One member explained:

I loved that they asked the question, “How can our institutions better support generative artists?” Rather than asking each other that, they asked generative artists! When are theatres asking these questions without the impacted party in the room—and can we change that across the board for the field?”

At the next meeting, the Think Tank dug into the potential of the Artist Fleet. The group discussed how a theatre could utilize artists for concentrated tasks that included audience development ideation, social media, and community engagement events. The initiative could provide a theatre’s overextended staff with extra labor; for artists, it could provide a reliable, albeit small, income. (Acknowledging that nearly every theatre in America was in a budget crisis, the group brainstormed other forms of meaningful compensation, ranging from free rehearsal space to promotion to strategic mentorship.) The group also envisioned the program beyond a sole institution’s walls: a regional network of artists-for-hire, co-facilitated with existing local and national service organizations. 

The final meetings had a contemplative framework. By May, two of the four artistic directors— Stephanie Ybarra and Hana S. Sharif—had left their theatres for positions at private foundations or other theatres. Several members of the Cuatro and Think Tank were experiencing personal and professional exhaustion. Due to the institutional shifts, and the collective’s general weariness, there was a desire for a community-oriented space for big questions and meditations. The group mused on the necessity of theatre, citing its healing properties, ritualism, ephemerality, and three-dimensional empathy, as well as tactics to reignite widespread excitement for the form.

The Think Tank’s last gathering in June 2023 provided a reflective space, as the group reviewed the most resonant conversations from the year. (The most cited moments were the “If I Were an Artistic Director” game, Artist Fleet conversation, and brainstorms about incorporating artists into marketing, audience development, and community engagement initiatives. But as one Think Tank member acknowledged, “There have been so many substantive ideas, but I just wished we had more time to strategize on how to implement them.”) The group offered one final round of artist and project recommendations, discussed mechanisms and consent for publicly sharing their ideas, and ideated on what a continuation of a relationship between the institutions and artists could look like.

Think Tank Exit Interview

In June 2023, as part of my duties as the project documentarian, I conducted virtual exit interviews with four of the five Think Tank members. (One did not respond to multiple scheduling requests. To encourage maximum openness, the Cuatro did not attend; instead, they received compiled, anonymized feedback that also included written reflections from the Readers collected via form.) All participants cited the meetings with specific objectives as the most memorable component of the experience. “I was so compelled by the envisioning of a think tank as a job, a service, a resource, an allyship, and a systemic alternative,” reflected one member. The community element energized another participant: “I didn't always need or expect a curation of ideas, or a hard goal for the conversation. I really valued the time to show up as I was and share space with others.”

The reduced number of meetings—a revision to address bandwidth issues and align with the lower pay—created a compressed schedule. While every Think Tank member wanted more time to discuss and strategize implementation of their ideas, they still felt properly compensated for their labor. “$400 felt like a huge amount of money for a small amount of work,” said one member. “It gave me some breathing room and it allowed me to live like a person.”

The unfolding changes at the four theatres seeped into the experience, leading to organizational disconnect with some artists. “The Cuatro were incredibly receptive [to our contributions],” noted one member. “But I wasn’t sure if the institutions at large were receptive.” Another agreed with this assessment, explaining, “It's hard to know whether or not an institution really wants me, or if I'm just good for the moment. But the individuals in the room wanted all of us to be there.”

One Think Tank participant expressed disappointment at the reduced presence of the artistic directors (just one appearance, and only from Goyanes and Ybarra, at a joint virtual happy hour with the Readers): “I wish the artistic directors had been on Zoom with us at least once to discuss their visions and struggles… [their absence] left a bad taste in my mouth.” Another member concurred: “It was great when Stephanie [Ybarra] and Maria [Goyanes] were engaged and interested in us, but regular participation from all the artistic directors would have had more impact.”

Despite these criticisms, the surveyed members unanimously recommended the experience. One suggested that future participants adopt a pragmatic outlook: “If a person wants to spur seismic change, they need to temper their expectations. But if they want to be in meaningful conversation and community with artists, then absolutely: Yes, join the Think Tank.”

It's only fitting that an initiative born from individual connections won’t end with these specific organizations. The ongoing work is broadening beyond traditional institutional boundaries.

Takeaways and Learnings*

1. Split Caucus, Split Success

The second year's structural division into Think Tank and Readers solved some problems while creating others. The focused roles addressed the previous year’s ambiguity, providing participants with concrete deliverables and expectations.

However, the clarity came with trade-offs: Several participants noted the lost opportunity for cross-pollination between the groups. “It would've been nice to have a monthly meeting to convene together and to hear what people were excited about,” reflected one reader.

The artistic directors' limited participation proved more consequential. While the Cuatro maintained enthusiastic program stewardship, only two of the four artistic leaders appeared during this second year at just one single virtual happy hour. This withdrawal, however unintentional, disappointed several participants and eliminated one of the first Caucus’s defining features: direct access to artistic leadership.

2. Experiment with Generosity (But Always Pay Your Artists)

In a field where intellectual labor is routinely extracted without compensation, even miniscule payments for theatre workers are considered generous. This reality troubled the Cuatro as much as it motivated them. Refusing to settle for symbolic gestures, they pushed themselves toward a more substantive question for year two: Could a reduced fee structure still meaningfully compensate participants' time and expertise?

The results were mixed, reflecting the different compensation structures for the two Caucus groups. Think Tank members, with their $400 monthly retainer for fewer meetings, felt adequately compensated. But some Readers found themselves wrestling with inequitable workloads that demanded far more time and analysis than a flat fee of $25 per script afforded.

Yet even the imperfect compensation was appreciated. As one Think Tank member explained:

I was so hurting for income and was grateful for a consistent source of money. Often, I don't know how to gauge my worth or value—as an artist, my standard is so off. So rarely am I paid for anything that being paid for something I care about felt wonderful. I never felt like I was getting used, and I felt joyful, like my time and knowledge was being respected.

The systematic devaluation of artistic labor has left many theatre workers unable to assess their own worth (let alone to independently support themselves). Of course, while the Caucus didn't and couldn’t resolve this crisis, it nonetheless provided an alternative model of small actions, organized around the belief that intellectual contributions deserve compensation. These practices (stipends for meetings, payments for script readings, etc.) offer possibilities for how institutions might engage, rather than exploit, artistic labor.

3. Widen Your Circles

Traditional industry networks create echo chambers of familiar perspectives. When institutions consistently turn to the same advisors and resources—agents, New York and festival exports, elite grad school mafias—they perpetuate existing hierarchies and reinforce exclusionary pipelines. The Caucus offered a different infrastructure, connecting artists to institutions and fostering relationships that might never have formed through conventional channels.

The Caucus repositioned artists as advisors, asking institutions to listen to their perspectives on industry challenges. This reversal, however modest, can shift the dynamics of influence, as artists are consulted on programming, community engagement strategies, resource allocation, and other conversations typically reserved for staff and board members.

4. Question the Givens with Cognitive Resourcing

Many artistic staffers live in perpetual crisis mode, where big-picture thinking and dreaming are easily displaced by the immediacy of day-to-day emergencies. The Think Tank offered cognitive resourcing through external perspectives. When a theatre’s staff is too buried in operational chaos to think beyond next week, outside artistic voices can examine foundational assumptions and generate solutions that stressed institutions cannot envision on their own.

This approach requires institutions to acknowledge that their operational logic, while necessary for daily function, may also constrain transformative thinking. The Think Tank's most productive conversations occurred when the Cuatro transparently shared internal obstacles while inviting participants to question whether those limitations were truly fixed. “As an artist, I can be idealistic, and it was helpful to learn about the reality of institutional roadblocks,” said one Think Tank member. The resulting dialogue between reality and imaginative possibility created a space where new models and practices could emerge.

5. Build Resiliency Around Failure

The Cuatro applied a new play development ethos to the program’s design, understanding that final iterations rarely resemble first drafts. The foursome treated each meeting, structural adjustment, and participant suggestion as part of an ongoing creative process, allowing the initiative to evolve into something more responsive to participant needs and organizational realities.

Replicating the open, generative atmosphere of a new work process with an institutional initiative requires deliberate resistance to economic pressures that punish risk-taking. Simultaneously, it requires awareness of those pressures’ potential impact on institutional staff, many of whom are also punished by the industry’s inadequate compensation paradigm. If, as one Think Tanker pitched, a theatre replaced its annual production of A Christmas Carol with a new commissioned play, and the new work generated significantly less than income, how would a theatre respond? Freezing new hires (even when those roles are essential), cutting salaries, or even eliminating staff positions?

Today, success within the American theatre is all too often defined by financial returns, a framework that incentivizes artistic projects that yield increased revenue and subscriber counts. (The irony, of course, is that prioritizing profit margins often undermines the very artistry that could ensure long-term institutional health.) This risk-averse calculus leaves little space for the open, generative mindset required for productive failure and discovery—two qualities essential to creating art.

By treating program adjustments as artistic development rather than course corrections, the Caucus demonstrated how institutions might cultivate healthier relationships with uncertainty. This approach—maintaining curiosity about what might emerge, rather than defensiveness about what didn't work (or assumptions about what couldn’t)—is a possible template for navigating increasingly unpredictable artistic and economic landscapes.

The Future*

After the second Artistic Caucus ended in June 2023—and the multi-year grant funding the initiative concluded–the program’s future was still unclear. In the preceding months, the Cuatro had discussed budget models for a post-grant iteration, but the potential funds from each institution dwindled as organizational budget deficits grew. (Over the course of the year, one theatre’s suggested annual contribution for a future Caucus dropped from $10,000 to $2,000.) In October 2023, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis canceled two upcoming productions and launched an emergency fundraising campaign to combat a projected $2.5 million budget shortfall. A year later, after two seasons with significant deficits, Woolly Mammoth laid off four members of its production staff.

In addition to the impossible finances, all four architects of the project left their institutions. In April 2023, Stephanie Ybarra exited Baltimore Center Stage for a program officer role at the Mellon Foundation, one of the Artistic Caucus’ primary funders. Later that month, Hana S. Sharif announced she was stepping down from the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis to lead Arena Stage in Washington, DC, following the retirement of Molly Smith, who was Arena’s artistic director for twenty-five years. In March 2025, a year and a half after the Caucus’s conclusion, Maria Manuela Goyanes announced she would be departing Woolly Mammoth to serve as artistic director of LCT3 and producer at Lincoln Center Theater. Six months later, Jacob Padrón revealed he would leave Long Wharf at the end of the 2025-26 season.

As is often the case with artistic leadership transitions, the departures trickled down to their staff. Becks Redman served as the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’s interim artistic director for several months before joining the Old Globe in San Diego as an associate producer in April 2024. Annalisa Dias’s position at BCS (director of artistic innovation and partnerships) was eliminated in January 2024 as part of the theatre’s response to its budget crisis; the theatre laid off 8 percent of its staff, including Dias, and it also instituted mandatory pay cuts after posting a $1.79 million budget deficit. Seven months later, Dias was announced as one of the new co-directors of HERE Arts Center in New York City.

Conclusion: Beyond Institutions and Towards Each Other

Running from late 2021 through June 2023, the Artistic Caucus coincided with a broader reckoning in American theatre about financial stability: mass layoffs, emergency fundraising campaigns, audience decline, existential questions about whether organizations could survive at all. In that context, the Artistic Caucus might seem like a luxury, a well-intentioned experiment that couldn't survive economic reality.

But perhaps it was the opposite: a necessary rehearsal for the kinds of relationships that will be essential as the field remakes itself. As the learnings of the Artistic Caucus underscore, the field will not be saved by a single institution or visionary leader, but rather by the collective wisdom of artists and administrators working together to question what seems inevitable and create what seems impossible.

In the first report, I wrote about how relationship building is a long game. The Caucus developed from the friendship between four artistic directors, three of whom are no longer at their original institutions. It's only fitting that an initiative born from individual connections won’t end with these specific organizations. The ongoing work is broadening beyond traditional institutional boundaries into publishing partnerships, informal professional networks, and cross-disciplinary collaborations:

• During the 2023-2024 season, Woolly Mammoth and Long Wharf co-produced inaugural Caucus member Adil Mansoor’s Amm(i)gone, a solo performance.
• Nailah Harper-Malveaux assistant directed Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ and Dave Harris’s Incendiary during Woolly’s 2022-23 season as part of the BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle’s Rising Director Cohort, an eight-theatre initiative “to train and prepare future women artistic directors to lead, to create, to innovate, and to enhance the place of theatre in the American culture.”
• Regina Victor was featured in a Rhiana Yazzie reading as part of Woolly Mammoth’s A Mammoth Showcase: AnInterdisciplinary Gathering of Native Artists in January 2023.
• In May 2023, Long Wharf produced UNIVERSES’s Live from the Edge featuring Caucus member Nsangou Njikam.
• L M Feldman had a one-week writing residency at BCS during fall 2023.
• Regina Victor and I partnered to co-publish Annalisa Dias’s “Decomposition Instead of Collapse - Dear Theatre, Be Like Soil” on our respective platforms, Rescripted and Nothing for the Group. The eco-driven manifesto urging theatres to move beyond an economic paradigm driven by scarcity went viral and inspired a response series from artists, co-published with 3Views. (Jacob Padrón wrote the first essay.)
• The Cuatro organized a series of informal quarterly meetings with other dramaturgs and artistic producers, seeking to replicate the supportive environment they had cultivated among themselves with a broader network of peers.

The Artistic Caucus demonstrated that the field's gatekeeping mechanisms are not immutable laws, but institutional choices that can be changed. Alternative approaches to curation and artist support exist in potential and practice. The real test is whether theatres will prioritize these models and whether funders will embrace genuine transformation.

Ultimately, the real metric of success wasn’t the program’s continued existence in its original form or with its original participants, but rather what the Caucus’s ideas and values reveal: The most important changes happen in the spaces between formal programs and the relationships that endure past the funding that created them.

The Artistic Caucus showed that artists can be intellectual partners for institutions and that cross-organizational resource-sharing is possible. Most importantly, the program offered a model for how the field might respond to crisis: not by retreating into scarcity thinking, but by expanding the circle of who gets to imagine solutions.

Other organizations are already building on this foundation. In January 2024, five small-to-midsize theatre companies—Cleveland Public Theatre, Company One, Crowded Fire Theater, Mosaic Theater Company, and Perseverance Theatre—announced the Future of the American Theatre Cohort, a collective focused on sharing resources, joint learning, and championing new visions for the field. Like the Artistic Caucus, the program is funded by a two-year grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The Artistic Caucus ended due to myriad reasons: grant expiration, financial constraints, shifting priorities, and the exits of many key participants. But despite its conclusion, the program succeeded in expanding the definition of what sustainability might mean in the Wild West of the post-2020 theatre landscape. Organizations should not aspire to maintain programs indefinitely, but to create models elastic enough to adapt, spread, and evolve. In a field built on the ephemeral, the most valuable legacies are the connections that persist beyond funding cycles or leadership tenures. The future of the American theatre lies not in preserving institutions as they are, but in nurturing the relationships that will outlast them.