Leadership

Regina Victor, artistic director of Slideshow Theatre Company, and Kaiser Ahmed, artistic director of Jackalope Theatre Company, discuss the joys and challenges of stepping into their Chicago-based positions as theatres across the United States recalibrate their programming.

Arianna Gass and Daniel Park share their experience restructuring their company into a worker cooperative and what benefits this model offers.

Robert Barry Fleming, executive artistic director of Actors Theatre, and Courtney Sale, artistic director of Merrimack Repertory Theatre, converse about structural racism and systems of oppression, what can be learned from theatre for young audiences, the possibilities in a post-COVID world, and more.

In a conversation that took place in November 2020, Meropi Peponides and Yury Urnov discuss stepping into shared leadership roles, adapting during the pandemic, paying salaries to actors, and more.

David Dower and Martin Faucher discuss leaving their leadership positions at Boston’s ArtsEmerson and Montreal’s Festival TransAmériques, respectively; the balance between artistic responsibility and activist responsibility as artistic leaders; passing the torch to the next generation; and more. / David Dower, directeur artistique du ArtsEmerson de Boston, et Martin Faucher, codirecteur général et directeur artistique du Festival TransAmériques de Montréal, discutent de leur départ respectif, de l’équilibre entre la responsabilité artistique et la responsabilité militante en tant que directeur artistique, du passage du flambeau à la prochaine génération, et plus.

Sophia Skiles, the incoming head of acting for the Brown/Trinity MFA program, and Nicole Brewer, who recently joined the acting faculty at the Yale School of Drama, dive deep into a conversation about what it means to be a woman of color in leadership.

Janice Rabian shares the discoveries she made during her summer research project about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the theatre field and how leaders are pivoting after the murder of George Floyd.

Susan Booth, artistic director of Atlanta’s the Alliance Theatre, talks about how we are currently living in what is referred to as “the carnival” and shares ideas of how artistic organizations ought to react during this time.

Jack Reuler, artistic director of Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theatre, reflects on how the pandemic might just be the great equalizer in the American theatre and how it’s time for theatre to move from being something nice to being something necessary.

Tamilla Woodard, co–artistic director of Working Theater in New York, talks about why she makes theatre and offers several “what if” thoughts about how the field should move forward.

Earlier this year, Mark Valdez, hungering for public discourse around the future of the American theatre field, prompted three arts leaders with the question, “What is our purpose now?” This piece kicks off the series of responses.

Teresa Coleman Wash reflects on how the current state of affairs has fueled an urgency to interrogate all systems of oppression and argues that it’s past time to stop holding Eurocentric theatres up as the pinnacle of success.

Al Heartley and Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Black theatre managers who work in predominantly white American theatres, respond to the recent “solidarity” statements posted by theatres across the country after George Floyd was killed.

Michelle Hensley and Abe Rybeck—former founders and artistic directors of Minneapolis’s Ten Thousand Things and Boston’s the Theater Offensive, respectively—discuss their leadership transition, including knowing when to step back, succession planning, fears of leaving, and more.

Ann C. James reflects on the quickly growing field of intimacy direction, arguing that it is vital for the leadership to include people of color so that stories centering on racialized sexual trauma and non-white romantic intimacy can be told in the most truthful ways.

Nan Barnett, National New Play Network’s executive director, talks about the organization’s twenty-year evolution; the realization that, as a governing body, they were “really, really white”; and their commitment to turning the organization into a replicable model of a diverse and inclusive ecosystem.

Early career arts manager Al Heartley speaks with Jennifer Bielstein, executive director of American Conservatory Theater, about active listening, how to balance focusing on the details with looking at the bigger pictures, management values, and more.

Amelia Parenteau speaks with Lauren E. Turner about racialized trauma in American theatre, Lauren’s experience with it, and healing.