Artistic director Kenn McLaughlin saying goodbye to Stages after 25 years
“I feel like Houston is on a real trajectory. There’s something in the soil. There’s (a feeling) of becoming, of growing into itself as a real theater city in a way it’s been aspiring to for a long time.”
Kenn McLaughlin
Kenn McLaughlin has decided to step down as artistic director of Stages after next season, which will be his 25th on the job, the theater announced last week. McLaughlin had just broken the news to Stages’ staff when he spoke with the Chronicle, and everything was still sinking in.
The mood was “emotional,” McLaughlin said.
“We sit in silence a lot together, and we just kind of sat in silence and talked about what the future can look like for all of us,” he added.
During McLaughlin’s tenure, Stages has enjoyed a prolonged and impressive period of growth topped by the January 2020 opening of The Gordy, the $36 million, nearly 67,000square-foot venue divided into three performance areas. According to statistics provided by the company, in that time the annual budget has increased from $1.4 million to $6.4 million; the staff has grown from six full-time and two parttime employees to 46 full-time employees; and net assets have grown from $31,000 to $32 million.
Stages is also playing an essential role in the nascent Houston Theater Training Coalition, a sort of labor-sharing agreement between numerous local theater companies with an eye toward creating and sharing a skilledlabor pool of both onstage and behind-thescenes talent. In Houston’s crowded but collegial theater scene, McLaughlin said he likes to imagine what sets Stages apart is “we punch above our weight all the time.”
“I think that kind of spirit, that rebel spirit, that sense of daring and courage — I think that’s always been there, and if anything, I think it’s a real affinity for my sensibilities,” he added. “That’s the kind of person I see myself as: somebody who wants to put the bar a little bit higher than I might be able to jump, but try to jump it (anyway).”
As much as Stages has changed during McLaughlin’s time at the helm, so to has the theatrical community around it. Today’s environment is significantly more diverse and inclusive, he believes, with many more kinds of stories being told.
“I feel like Houston is on a real trajectory,” he said. “There’s something in the soil. There’s (a feeling) of becoming, of growing into itself as a real theater city in a way it’s been aspiring to for a long time. The talent in the city right now is off the hook. There’s so much talent feeding into the city in a way that I have not seen.”
McLaughlin has overseen nearly 250 plays during his Stages tenure. Asking which stick out most in his memory is the height of unfairness, but he graciously narrowed it down to two: Aaron Posner’s “Stupid (expletive) Bird,” an irreverent adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Seagull”; and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915,” in which a troupe of actors reckon with the German army’s systematic extermination of the titular tribe a few years earlier.
“I think our production is one of the most stunning things that I’ve ever been a part of in my career,” McLaughlin said. “I think (it) captured that sense in the room where you walk out a different person than you walk in, the way that art is supposed to work that way. I feel like those two reached a level of communication and connection that embody what we always reach for.”
After some reflection, McLaughlin said he’s proudest of how he’s been able to supply a platform for emerging directors such as Eboni Bell Darcy, Mitchell Greco, and Tevyn Washington. But other warm memories are close at hand, like the email he received from Stephen Sondheim during rehearsals for the May 2013 production of “Road Show.” One night the cast had gathered around the piano in the rehearsal room and the experience “cracked my soul open … it was breathtaking,” McLaughlin remembered. He adjourned to his computer and wrote a brief note to the late musical-theater icon.
“He wrote me back the kindest email in the world, telling me how much my email meant to him, and saying for him it wasn’t about awards and it wasn’t about what the media wrote,” McLaughlin said. “It was knowing that artists are touched by his work and putting the work in the world.”
He also loved directing Stages’ recurring pantomime, or panto, productions, the singularly British form of theater that is part parody, part audience participation and part farce. But the lasting monument to his tenure will be shepherding the company from a cramped building on Allen Parkway to the nearby Gordy. Shortly after the building opened, McLaughlin stood alone one night in one of the new theaters, the one with the custombuilt floor, and began reciting Shakespeare.
“It really hit me what building the building meant,” he said. “Because it is about the artists of the future and making sure they have the platforms they need to tell the world about the world.”
COVID descended just weeks after the Gordy opened. McLaughlin had already been toying with the idea of stepping aside to let a new generation take over (“the status quo is deadly for art”), but stayed to help see Stages through the pandemic. It’s hardly lost on him that his decision to leave now comes amid a swirl of cosmic symmetry.
Now onstage through Aug. 6 is Keith Glover’s blues parable “Thunder Knocking on the Door,” years ago McLaughlin’s final production at the Great Lakes Theater Festival before heading to Houston. And his final season will commence next month with one of McLaughlin’s favorites, Ted Swindley’s “Always … Patsy Cline.”
“I just love that little gem of a play, I really do,” McLaughlin said. “This will be the fourth time I’ve directed it. There’s something that touches me deeply. It touches our audiences, and it’s the 35th anniversary, so there was just a lot of reasons it made sense.”
Plus, he added, “it felt like, well, I want to do that one one more time.”
As for where McLaughlin might be headed next, he’s decided an ancestral pilgrimage to Ireland is in the cards. Dublin is lovely, he admitted, but he’s grown enamored with the western part of the island, the area around Galway: “She’s calling me.”
“I do think I’m going to activate on that dream at some point in time,” McLaughlin said. “The storytelling … I don’t remember an hour of my life from childhood where my grandmother or my father were not telling me a story. That place, and that tradition, is part of who I am. And so I’m pretty darn sure that’s going to be part of the adventure.”