San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
How does a theater leader know when their work is complete?
Theater leaders are artists, even if they’re not directors or writers or actors or designers. Deciding what a theater company is takes vision; making that vision reality is craft.
As I’ve reported on the departure of artistic director after artistic director in the Bay Area over the past five years, I find myself wanting to explore two questions: How does a leader know when their artwork — running a company — is complete? What makes their successor see that same project as a blank canvas?
Torange Yeghiazarian, who last fall departed Golden
Thread Productions, the San Francisco company she founded in 1996, and her successor, Sahar Assaf, were willing to go there with me with refreshing candor. Assaf comes to Golden Thread — the first American theater company dedicated to
Middle Eastern artists and stories — from the Theater Initiative at the American University of Beirut. Yeghiazarian is slated to be a Fulbright specialist — a program of the U.S. State Department — among other future projects. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Q: Sahar, what felt right about moving to another country?
SA: That’s a hard question. I’m leaving Lebanon at a very critical time in its history — emotionally speaking, politically speaking, socially speaking. We had a series of crises in the last year, starting with a complete economic collapse — it’s in free fall — and then COVID, and then there was one of the biggest nonnuclear explosions in the history of mankind (in the port of Beirut in August 2020, killing more than 200). That paralyzed everything. It was the first time for me as an artist that I felt I’m not able to produce. I’m not able to think about a theater project. It was so intense.
I’m thinking of it as, I’m simply shifting platforms. My values are my values, and they’re coming with me. What I’m interested in — political theater, theater that addresses social justice — is going to continue, whether here or there.
I’m extremely happy to be here. I need a break from all the trauma that we’ve been living the past couple decades, but especially the last year. I have a toddler, and — maybe that’s not a very politically correct thing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway — I wanted him to have a better opportunity.
Q: How dare you!
SA: It’s hard, because I say this, and I think of all the other children.
You need to be empowered — you need to have a certain level of peace of mind and spirit to be able to create. If we’re using our theater as a voice, we need to be strong. Lebanese people are now living survival guilt: How come I’m still alive, after the explosion? You cannot possibly create, I think, when you’re in that mindset. You need at least a little bit of peace to create.
Peace is a journey. The environment is peaceful here, but peace is also internal. When you’re connected there and thinking about loved ones and friends you left behind — a country, a city you loved and left behind — you’re not at peace, really.
Q: At a time of heightened U.S. interest in the Middle East, with the recent killings in Israel and the Palestinian territories, does the mission and role of Golden Thread change?
TY: My view is that we stick with our mission, which is to let the work of art speak. Unfortunately, there are terrible things happening in the Middle East on a daily basis. I have all the sympathy with what’s happening in Palestine, but Yemen has been starving for seven years; and I know that we at Golden Thread have only produced one short play dealing with Yemen. And we’ve produced, I don’t know, 16 plays dealing with Palestine, and we’ve probably produced more Palestinian playwrights than any other company in the U.S.; so I feel good about our commitment to the overall cause. I don’t feel a need for what I call, maybe incorrectly, kneejerk reactions to current events. That’s the kind of spiral that derails you from your mission, which is to develop a kind of work that can really change hearts and minds.
Otherwise you go crazy trying to solve problems that you have no control over.
SA: Everything that’s happening today is a stark reminder of why we need Golden Thread and more companies like it. Having lived in the Middle East, I tell you: There’s a huge impact of the foreign policy of the U.S. on our daily lives. If we work on changing the perceptions of the people here about the region, it would eventually help change, in a very long run.
Q: Can you give me an example?
SA: It’s very hard to get a visa anywhere in the world. If I’m creating work in Mediterranean cities, whenever we have a meeting of the artistic committee, I have to start maybe six months in advance. Other people carry their bags to the airport and go.
Q: Torange, you’ve been planning this transition for four to five years. What felt right about now?
TY: In 2010, I had the opportunity to take a sixmonth sabbatical and creatively rejuvenate. But since then, I haven’t had any rest. From 2011 to 2021, our company has completely transformed. Our budget is probably three times what it was. We have fulltime staff. We have national and local recognition. We’ve done so many world premieres.
After my sabbatical, I wrote three fulllength plays that came out of that sabbatical. Since 2015, I haven’t had a fulllength play. When you’re the executive artistic director of a company that has a growth path, you’re juggling so many different balls. Far be it for me to do things simply or minimize. I’m like, “Oh, here, let’s do this, too!”
Around 2017 or 2018, I noticed the field is changing. A younger, more radical, more vocal generation was coming up. On the one hand, they were saying some of the same stuff we were saying for 20 years about equity and representation, that theater should reflect the population in the U.S., and it hasn’t.
All of that was great, but then it’s also a new conversation that requires a different kind of personality than mine. I want to collaborate with everybody. I want to say yes more than no. As part of this demand for social justice, the language has become radicalized to an extent that it’s a little bit exclusionary — perhaps it’s necessary; perhaps that’s what it takes: to say no for a little while before we can all say yes to each other again. But I didn’t feel like I was the right person for that conversation.
Q: It’s striking to hear the word “exclusionary” describe a movement calling for equity.
TY: Yes, but it’s because there is so much inequity. What it will require is that some predominantly white theaters be defunded. Assuming that funding is finite, some people are not going to get funded so that BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) theaters, who have been excluded for many years, get funded. And that is the right thing that needs to happen. But that probably means that a bunch of predominantly white institutions will shut down.
There’s a period of getting to the balance, and that period requires a different kind of navigation than I have skills for.
I’m not naive. I just had an email from one company, saying, “Hey, we’re producing this Iranian play. Here’s the cast list. Can you send us some actors?” I’m like, “You’re emailing me to cast your show for you, with no compensation, no artistic involvement? I have no relationship with you. Why do you think this is something that I would do?” Whereas four years ago, I might have said, “Here’s a list of, like, 12 actors you should call.”
I don’t do that now. I stop myself from doing it.
Q: Does that feel weird? TY: It does feel weird. But it’s necessary, because they have to learn. They wouldn’t email Joe Haj (artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis) and say, “Here’s a show I want to do. Send me some actors.” It’s like, “No, you go find your own actors.”
Q: Sahar, what plans do you have for Golden Thread so far?
SA: This year we’re doing New Threads (a new play reading series) again, in person or hybrid, and the opening will be a staged reading that I’m putting together, based on testimonies of survivors of the Beirut explosion. We’re working with actors from the Bay Area but also Beirut, and it’ll be a a bilingual event.
I hope I’ll also be making space for fun and joyful things, because the Middle East is a lot of fun! It looks dark from away, because the mainstream media here tend to make it extreme. But the food, the weather, the people, they love life. There was a famous banner that people carried during the Oct. 17 Lebanese revolution that started in 2019 that says, “We’re the happiest depressed people you’ll ever meet.”
Q: What appeals to you about documentary theater? SA: I have a journalism background; it’s what I did my B.A. in. Then I ran away to sociology. Then I finally found my way in theater. But I’m very grateful that this happened, because these two come into my work a lot. I love that documentary theater is based on personal testimony; I think there’s a lot of power in there. The research is another aspect that I love, and the fact that it is more truthful than mainstream media, although it is more subjective. I don’t claim to be objective when I’m doing documentary work, because there’s my voice. The way I’m putting the story together is partly editing, which is partly rewriting, which is writing, effectively.