For theaters, opportunity comes during time of crisis
For Jackie Taylor, the founder of the Black Ensemble Theater and awoman who has seen calls for greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the Chicago theater come and go over the years, this moment seems different.
“This has been a fight for more than 400 years,” Taylor said. “So it’s not exactly new. Andwe had all the demonstrations and the marches and the same conversations in the 1960s. But there has been a change in the wind. And I think, in terms of things clicking in people’s minds about racism, it is suddenly nowhappening on a deeper level.”
So what’s different? “Young people,” Taylor said. “Young people, including young white people, are saying they do notwant aworld of white privilege, but one of inclusion. They are bringing a different essence to the fight. So there is new hope.”
That hope, though, is tempered by a contemporaneous pandemic that has shuttered Chicago theaters, possibly for many months to come, and turned the later half of 2020 into a struggle for financial survival both on institutional and individual levels. Jobs have disappeared. The talent that makes up the sector is being forced to seek employment elsewhere, promptingworries over when, or if, they will return. Governmental help of adequate scope has not been forthcoming and many hands from many sectors are outstretched.
And while some anti-capitalist activists argue that there is no better moment to affect systemic change than in times of crisis, economic ruin and requisite rebuilding, most theaters are grappling with fervent demands for systemic change at the same moment they are trying to hunker down, maintain some kind of income and ensure their continued existence into 2021.
In any form.
And that’s not all. It is an election season. The American landscape beyond the theater’s doors is, demonstrably, divided and fraught. And America makes up the audience.
“Whatwould aliens from another planet think about us?,” Taylor said of the pervasive battles both physical and rhetorical. “We’re constantly fighting with each other. We dehumanize each other. We are dehumanizing ourselves. I’ll tell what they would think: ‘What is wrong with those people?’
“What is wrong with us?”
So can you effect real change in such circumstances? Maybe the question should be, what other choice exists?
“It just has to be doable,” said CrissHenderson, the executive director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater onNavy Pier which, like all of the major theaters in the city, has been targeted by activists demanding more racial equity and inclusion. “There are colliding priorities everywhere and always so there is never a good time or a bad time to do thiswork. But, as theatermakers, we have to be present in the times in whichwe are living andwe have to be in service to our communities. And theways in whichweweren’t doing that are much clearer nowto us. Intention has to be replaced with intentionality.”
“We are going to do it,” Henderson said. “Will it be fast enough for some people? Probably not. Butwe are going to do it.”
Logically, such reforms begin with the governing and management structures of the organizations. In the case of non-profit theaters, that means the boards of directors towhommost of the senior management staff report, and whose statutory duty is the governance and guidance of the theater.
Traditionally, theaters have looked for board members with deep pockets, institutional loyalty and political influence, even to the point of instigating hefty minimum requirements for a board member’s annual giving. Much of that practice is nowbeing rethought.
Northlight Theatre in Skokie, for example, has reached out to E. Faye Butler, a prominent Black star of the Chicago theater, and she has joined its board.“We are thinking less about minimum annual requirements and more about asking people to give what they can,” said artistic director BJ Jones, noting that Butler’s addition is part of a campaign to add several more boardmembers to increase the diversity of the body.
“It is about taking a very hard look at the culture of any theater’s board,” Henderson says, “and reviewing where there are biases and obstacles to being more inclusive and representative of the city, while also recognizing the fiduciary and governance responsibility.”
Theaters that long have had relatively diverse boards of directors are at an advantage. The Goodman Theatre executive director Roche Schulfer said his theater’s commitment to a diverse board of trustees, greatly influenced by the gregarious longtime board member Lester M. Coney, dates back to the 1980s. “I really think it all has to begin with thework on stage,” Schulfer said. “That is what makes a board member become an advocate for an organization. And recruiting diverse board members at the Goodman is always a priority.”
Definition Theatre, a small company founded by Black artists, has serving under-represented communities at the core of its mission.
“Our board always has been mostly made up of BIPOC folks andwe are mostlywomen led,” saidNeelMcNeill, the executive director charged with overseeing Definition’s impendingmove to a permanent home on Chicago’s South Side. “Whatwe value so much is really the diverse thinking of all those individuals.”
Kate Piatt Eckert, the executive director of Steep Theatre, said that it’s crucial for boards of directors to change their thinking before adding new members of color. “You can’t diversify a board until you’ve built an anti-racist board,” Piatt Eckert said, using a term often associated with the author and activist Ibram X. Kendi. “Thatway, whenwewelcome folks of color into that structure, and into our management structure, we are not placing a burden on them to fix those structures.”
In this crisis, of course, these issues hardly are abstract or able to be punted into the future. “Honestly,” McNeill said, “at this particular moment, we are just trying to support artists.”
And even at the much-larger Goodman Theatre, a priority has been to keep the institution producing, albeit at a reduced level. Schulfer says that has been a priority of the board, and it explains why the Goodman has been setting up shop in parks across the city this month, producing a showby Cheryl L. West about the activist Fannie LouHamer, with Butler in the lead role.
On a recent sunny afternoon, a diverse audience in Abbott Park for “Fannie Lou Hamer: Speak On It!” seemed to react in tandem with one another, hopeful that change will come and that Chicago theater will thrive in whatever newworld awaits.
“I refuse to dive into the ocean of negativity and despair,” Taylor said. “I am optimistic that people are paying attention, that theaters are looking at the racism that exists and trying to do things that help. And I hope they understand that this is not a one-moment or a one-time thing but something has to be enshrined into their organizations. And I amhoping that the people out there willwake up, dammit, and vote, sowe have a true democracy.”
“Our board always has been mostly made up of BIPOC folks and we are mostly women led. ... What we value so much is the diverse thinking of all those individuals.” — NeelMcNeill, Definition Theatre Company’s executive director, who has been charged with overseeing the company’s move to a permanent South Side home