There are mistakes I’ve made in my life that I will never get a do-over on. I missed a child’s first day of kindergarten to be at a first rehearsal for a play on the other side of the country. That was a terrible choice. The crazy thing was I easily could have said, “Can we start rehearsal a day late?” and I know the artistic director would’ve said yes, but I felt like it was unprofessional. That’s just an absolute no-brainer example.
Running an organization of this scale, you are going to have micro and macro moments of truth about trying to find balance in terms of how you spend your time and how you spend your precious life force, and trying to find that balance between your husband and family and your colleagues and all the different people who need things from you. Give yourself permission to pace yourself because it’s so easy to not do that.
Nataki: In the end, the play goes on, the theatre survives. We know that intellectually, but there’s something about the way we train that says we have to sacrifice in order for it to be worth it.
I’ve had enough mentors and bosses who, for all of their strengths, suffered from and supported workaholism. I’ve had to really place value on what was important to me, but also on how I spend my day and how many breaks I need. If I have to take a walk, then I do, and it’s okay. In fact, we all want me to take the walk, don’t we? Because then I come into the room and can actually be a person. But it was hard to get to a place where that was okay.
I think of pacing also in terms of how the ideas come and how many. I have never had creative energy like this in my life, and you’re right: pace is going to be integral to even making any of it make sense. The path I take, the process I create to employ any of those ideas. What helps with pacing is listening.
Bill: Absolutely.
Nataki: It’s like when I direct. I give my idea, and then I shut up, and I wait for my collaborators to take that idea and build it into something I could never have imagined. I create the space so that they come to me and say, “Let me try something.” I’m fascinated by that.
My secret sauce is that I’m in this game because I like to watch the process unfold, and I like to create a space in which people are constantly discovering. I know where it’s going, and I am pushing and pulling at the same time, but I love the moments of discovery. Please say to me, “I want to try something.”
My secret sauce is that I’m in this game because I like to watch the process unfold, and I like to create a space in which people are constantly discovering.
Bill: I have a question for you that connects to relinquishing. If I try to put myself back into my mind and my heart when I was appointed in 2006, and then I think about what we’ve achieved in the last almost thirteen years, the progress we’ve made in terms of equity around whose stories we’re telling and who’s interpreting those stories, and who’s working at our theatre to create and support that work, has been more dramatic than I could have dreamed in 2006.
The progress in terms of who’s in the audience to experience the stories has been more painfully slow than I ever would have imagined, and that’s a hard part of my relinquishing moment now because I love every single member of our audience individually. Every time I get to meet somebody and learn their story and learn how the work is affecting them, I am so moved by it. But the fact is, in terms of racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity of our audience, we have not moved the needle as dramatically as I would have hoped. How does hearing me say that impact you, and how does it relate to your own ambitions looking ahead twelve, thirteen years from now for this theatre?
Nataki: I think the final frontier is the audience. There have been all kinds of movements in the American theatre to try to shift what has become the normalized audience. I have spent the bulk of my experiences in theatre bearing witness to other people’s truths as opposed to having the privilege of having the stage reflect my class, my race, my age, and my gender. What I want to offer future audiences at OSF is the opportunity to witness more and reflect less.
When you reflect, you see something on the stage that’s like you and that is in line with your values and your experiences. When you’re witnessing, though, what you get to do is watch somebody who’s not like you experience a challenging circumstance and the consequence of that circumstance in the way they would, and you have to bear witness to their existence and their complexity and search for space within your own heart to access your empathy and better understand the complexity of their existence.
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this is a very special dialogue. Thank you for publishing it, HR. Bill and Nataki, thank you for sharing it. Wishing you both love and success in the transitions ahead.