The new majority
In two years, a sea change in the number of women running Connecticut theaters
Two years ago, women were scant in the top rungs of Connecticut’s major regional theater leadership. Today, they’re the majority.
Of Connecticut’s major regional theaters — theaters which create their own shows, rather than bring in tours — the majority now have a woman in at least one of their two main leadership slots.
This month, Donna Lynn Hilton became artistic director of Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam.
In September, Tiffani Gavin was named the new executive director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford.
In July, Florie Seery was appointed as the new managing director of Yale Repertory Theatre and associate dean of the Yale School of Drama.
In May, Shelley Quiala became the new executive director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.
In September 2019, Kit Ingui was named managing director of the Long Wharf
Theatre in New Haven.
And earlier in 2019, Hartford Stage announced that its new artistic director would be Melia Bensussen and its new managing director Cynthia Rider.
Several of these new leaders, including Bensussen, Ingui and Hilton are the first women to ever hold those titles at their respective theaters.
Some of the theaters had women leaders previously: Quiala, for instance, is the third female executive director in the Arts & Ideas Festival’s 25-year history; for the past few years there’s been a co-leadership model that included longtime managing director Liz Fisher, who retired this year. At Yale, Seery succeeds Victoria Nolan, who held similar positions at Yale Rep and the School of Drama for 27 years. The Rep and School of Drama have had numerous women running departments or in management for decades, though all its artistic directors (who also serve as dean of the school) have been men.
Hartford Stage had one previous female managing director, Elaine Calder from 1999 to 2001.
On the shoulders of women who came before
“Women frequently say ‘I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me... and that is certainly true here at Goodspeed,” Hilton says. “Women I’ve worked with in my 35 years in the business paved the way: recognized me, encouraged me and elevated me throughout my career. I think immediately of producer Sue Frost [Goodspeed’s line producer and associate producer from 1985 to 2005], who first brought me to Goodspeed and has been a trusted mentor and friend over these many years.
“Although until last week Goodspeed had always been led by a man, it has always been powered by women. We have a lot of young mothers on staff at Goodspeed right now and I have been inspired by their strength and resiliency during the pandemic . ... It is important to me that I pay back the mentoring that I received and I hope those younger women find some encouragement for their professional futures when they look at me.”
Bensussen, in a joint call last week with Rider, noted that the U.S. regional theater movement, which began in the early 1960s, was largely created by women, including Zelda Fichandler of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and the founders of two Texas theaters, Nina Vance at the Alley Theatre in Houston and Margo of Theatre 47 in Dallas.
“So perhaps this is a return to the strong women founders,” she said.
Diversity needs encouragement, support
The Wellesley Centers for Women released a study of “Women’s Leadership in Resident Theaters” in 2018. It asks “Why are there so few women in artistic and executive director positions?”
Among the study’s findings: “Unless a woman is well known in a hiring theater because she was employed there when a leadership position opened, Board selec
tion committees, perhaps subconsciously, trust men to be better leadership candidates.”
The study also finds the extensive travel and long irregular hours required to build visibility as a leadership candidate, “does not easily combine with a family life. Our sample of leaders and people with ambition to become leaders felt they have to maintain silence on the impact of this work style on their family life.”
Mentorship and institutional support both during and after hiring are also key, the study says.
“New leaders need support and encouragement,” Rider says. “Don’t wait for them to be successful. Make them successful.”
Future challenges
Other aspects of theater still need work. “We’re nowhere near parity in terms of male and female playwrights,” Bensussen says, and Rider says she hopes that “this shift in leadership,” Rider says, “will help with other shifts as well.”
Besides its swath of new leaders, Connecticut theaters may be said to be ahead of many other regions of the country in hiring female directors and designers, commissioning plays by female playwrights and finding strong acting roles for women.
“I think of technical and creative team positions where women are still not represented in equal numbers,” the Goodspeed’s Hilton says, “and on our boards where, in many cases men still outnumber women. We can’t stop pushing our work for gender parity. At the same time we have to prioritize racial equity. We need to implement a multipronged approach to that work: to diversify our boards while we are making room for the work of BIPOC writers; providing spaces for creative team members of color; and creating opportunities to bring young people of color to our theaters as audience members and as staff. I know from experience that the more perspectives you bring into a room, the more perspective you make room for in a conversation, the richer the work will be.”
Cynthia Rider seconds the concept that this “slight cultural shift” can be crucially important.
Hilton calls the surge in women as theater leaders “incredibly exciting and long overdue. The female leaders of those [other] Connecticut theaters were among the very first to congratulate me and to invite collaboration. I believe this group of women will drive a renaissance on the Connecticut theater scene. Connecticut is very fortunate to have so many women at the forefront as we begin our recovery from pandemic.”