Cover story
Consistency, sustainability are the watchwords for executive artistic director
Z Space has transformed itself into a mini arts center. Pictured: Lisa Steindler, executive artistic director of Z Space.
When Lisa Steindler graduated from the University of Vermont in 1989, she and two classmates raised $300 from a bottle drive to start a theater. “I love democracy,” Steindler said recently, recalling the power struggles of that long-ago triumvirate, “but it doesn’t necessarily work in the theater.”
Today, as executive artistic director of Z Space, which controls both the cavernous main theater and the black-box Z Below in the Mission District’s Project Artaud complex, Steindler holds a substantial leadership position on her own. She does it without a hint of autocratic authority. As Z Space marks its 25th anniversary, collaborations and connections with other theater and performing artists are the sustaining lifeblood of the organization. “We can’t do it alone,” said Steindler, who turns 52 in February, “and wouldn’t want to.”
From the forthcoming “Weightless,” a theatrical rock cabaret project mounted in conjunction with Piece by Piece Productions, to new works by longtime Z Space partner Word for Word, ambitious outreach prevails. Other recent and future companies on the Z Space roster include such New York notables as the Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service and Ars Nova as well as the Austin, Texasbased Rude Mechs and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater and Killing My Lobster.
Steindler, who joined Z Space in 2005 as director of new plays and became executive director in 2007, was buzzing about the company’s own upcoming
projects. World premieres by playwrights Kate E. Ryan and Colman Domingo are slated for the fall of this year. Steindler also hopes to bring “The Lucky Ones,” a Z Space/Ars Nova/ Piece by Piece-produced new musical opening in New York in March, to San Francisco.
All this and more happens on a $2 million annual budget the executive director and her staff and board manage prudently. “My ethos has been to get 80 percent of our funding in place before we open a show,” said Steindler, tucking back a strand of her thick, agreeably disheveled hair. “Consistency and sustainability,” she added, are the watchwords for producing, presenting and renting out Z Space and Z Below for the long term. Negotiations for a second 10-year option lease will begin this summer.
“Lisa is a strategic visionary,” said Susan Harloe, co-founder and co-artistic director (with JoAnne Winter) of Word for Word. “She’s fair and she’s strong and she won’t pull any punches. What she will always say is, ‘What can I do to help you get this done?’ ”
Steindler, who earned her local producing stripes with Encore Theatre (which remains a “side project” for her), swallowed hard when the opportunity to take on the former Theater Artaud presented itself in 2009. Bidding against two other organizations, Z Space won the right to spend $300,000 just to walk in the door and start equipping a space that had lain largely dormant for several years. Z Below was added to the mix in 2013, after the Jewish Theatre (formerly A Traveling Jewish Theatre) disbanded. In part, said Steindler, she acted to preserve a black box that was in danger of becoming something other than a performance space.
Such heady real estate transactions were remote unthinkables for the original Z Collective members, several of whom met waiting tables at the Zuni Cafe (the origin of the last-letter brand). Early productions were mounted in various theaters, Financial District office space and a hospital.
Rechristened the Z Space Studio, under David Dower’s direction, the group settled into a complex of offices and rehearsal space at 10th and Mission streets that served, in various ways, a number of small companies that came and went. “It was super exciting,” recalled Steindler. “People were sharing designers and bookkeepers and everything else. They were all companies that didn’t have a home.” Seen in hindsight, it was a trial balloon for the current collaborative Z Space enterprise.
Steindler had her own pre-Z experience of finding a home with Encore. After many seasons of itinerant life, that company landed in 1999 at the Thick House (now Potrero Stage), where it remained in residence for six years. When Steindler talked about Encore, she got a fond faraway look as she rattled off the names of playwrights she produced: Adam Bock, Lynne Alvarez, Leigh Fondakowski. In addition to Bock’s memorable “Five Flights,” in which she gave a splendid performance, Steindler has a sentimental fondness for Bock’s “The Shaker Chair,” which was co-produced with Shotgun Players and featured a live pig.
“The pig weighed 100 pounds when we started the run and about 400 by the end,” she said with a grin. Steindler, as she didn’t have to add, is not afraid of taking on a challenge.
Born in London and raised in New England, Steindler moved to the Bay Area in 1991 with her husband, an environmental lawyer, to study acting at ACT’s Conservatory. Dismayed by the turmoil in the program at the time, Steindler wrote a “manifesto” spelling out her grievances. The document was widely circulated and led to the departure of several people from the faculty.
Encore, which started at ACT’s Conservatory in the late 1980s, was a natural fit for Steindler, despite her relative inexperience. “It wasn’t like I’d gone to producer’s school,” she said. She learned and grew as she went. In addition to mounting Encore’s own shows around town, Steindler brought other companies — Fool’s Fury, Golden Thread — into an ever-expanding tent.
The two Z Space locations anchor a lively and revitalized performance scene at the blocksquare building between 16th and 17th on Alabama Street. Annual audience totals run from 25,000 to 30,000, said Steindler. Film shoots and other activities bring in additional revenues.
Reclaimed from the old Southern Exposure on the back side of the building, the Joe Goode Annex opened in 2011 with a newly built sprung and heated floor and flexible seating. Joe Goode Performance Works uses the space 30 to 40 percent of the time, said spokeswoman Adriana Marcial, with various small dance companies performing there most other weekends. Theatre of Yugen remains the resident company at Project Artaud’s Noh Space, which also rents its theater. Word for Word was rehearsing there the day Steindler took time out from her busy schedule to talk.
When Encore found a home at the Thick House, Steindler said, it came as a kind of revelation. “I didn’t know how important having a permanent space was until I had one. I could plan better and make the right choices.” At the warehouse-scale Z Space and the compact Z Below, those freedoms and responsibilities play out in larger terms.
“My hope has been to support more art and more artists,” said Steindler, “and reignite a space that was languishing.” With an already impressive track record and plenty of new projects in the works, Z Space has its flag firmly planted to do just that.