San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
All the theater world’s a stage in play about drama
Theater leadership has been rocked in recent years — first by a wave of boomers retiring, then by the pandemic, when oncecoveted jobs suddenly had few good parts (making art onstage) and lots of bad parts (endless fundraising, Zoom).
Now that backstage drama has a metatheatrical play of its own.
Oakland playwright Jonathan Spector jokes that if his satire “Best Available” had a trigger warning, it would be “realistic portrayals of working in nonprofit theater.” In the new play, which begins performances Saturday, May 18, at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage, the fictional City Repertory Theater is searching for a new leader. To write the show, Spector — who makes his Broadway debut this fall, with “Eureka Day” — interviewed dozens of artistic directors nationwide about how they got their posts.
To find out just how grueling those job searches are, the Chronicle sat down with Spector and two former leaders of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater — Mina Morita, who’s now freelance, and Marissa Wolf, who now leads Portland Center Stage.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Jonathan, what was it like interviewing dozens of theater leaders — many of them recently appointed — about how they got their jobs?
Spector: About 75% of the interviews I did were late 2019 or early 2020 — before COVID. …
There were still problems, but there was so much optimism and this sense of generational change that was finally happening across the field. And now to be an artistic director of a big institution, with the economic pressures after COVID, is like equal parts gift and punishment.
Wolf: The 2017-18 season is when we began to see a lot of artistic directors who had been in their posts for 25 years begin to retire. I remember feeling really excited that that was happening. Coming up in the Bay Area theater scene and watching closely the “Game of Thrones” of who’s at what place and how’s that going, it was fairly demoralizing to be like, “No one leaves. There actually are no opportunities for emerging artistic leaders to consider a pathway forward.” … And then the pandemic struck, and it changed the entire equation.
Morita: In that moment of optimism, we still didn’t understand as a field the structural deficits that were going to become very apparent as the pandemic hit.
Q: What do you mean by structural deficits?
Morita: Just even the basics of where income is coming from, what we rely on, who we rely on, what kind of perspectives and values those people have. … Maybe in the past we thought every organization had its own issues that were unique, and now we realize, oh, actually, the nonprofit theater sector has issues as a field.
Q: Marissa and Mina, you’ve both been through multiple artistic director searches. What surprised you the most about those processes?
Wolf: I’m a confident kid, and I was so, so proud of the work I was doing in the Bay Area. And like, no one cares. Of course, it is impactful, it’s important, but also outside of your own life, your own world, boy, it takes a lot of work to make yourself known. So that was very humbling.
I was bright-eyed and bushytailed because that is how I have moved through the world. But now I’m 41, so I’m just cold, like ice cold. I’m in my bitch era.
Morita: I can’t believe that, Marissa!
Wolf: (Laughs) I remember having a conversation with my friend Maria Goyanes, who had just landed the Woolly Mammoth artistic director job. The couple of opportunities I had had for some first and semifinal interviews, I felt almost out of my body — like I was off the ground.
She was really helpful. We talked a lot about, what does it mean to take up space as a female leader? And what does it mean to take your time as you respond thoughtfully and to not have perfect answers? What does it mean to dig inside all the prep you’ve done and all the thinking you’ve done and know it’s in there, rather than being a good student, which is what I had been trying to do, and coming with pages of notes for myself ?
Morita: (With women), they want to see on your resume that you’ve done the things as opposed to a male candidate where typically — and, Jonathan, I think this is even in the play — it’s OK if you can see the potential of that person doing the thing.
As a BIPOC-identifying female leader, I’ve stopped trying to pretend or put on airs about that. I think I’m just who I am, and if somebody really wants that, then it’s a good match. And if not, then it was not meant to be.
Spector: Obviously every case is unique, but the situations in which it has not worked out well in a transition is often because the board had a very different idea about who the candidate was that they were hiring. Because the board are not theater people, they don’t always have context for what you mean
when you say things. So they then paint their own picture of what this person’s going to be like, and then the person gets there and is like, “No, I’m doing the things I said I was going to do.” And the board’s like, “Whoa!”
Morita: For the search firms, especially in the early days, I could tell when I was the token candidate.
Q: How? Morita:
I would ask the question: What was it about me that interested the search committee? And if it was a very general answer or the firm didn’t know, then I was very clear.
There’s a whole conversation about charisma that’s in the play. Everyone thinks, “Oh wow. This person gave such a great interview. They’re telling a great story. They have all this energy. And then as soon as they arrive, it’s
like, but then where is that energy harnessed?
That’s been frustrating because I’m not the song and dance person. I’m here to do the job, and I love the job. I think it’s amazing when you get a great team together, and you build that over time. It’s not going to happen in six months to save the theater.
Q: Marissa, you told me you’re so proud of Portland Center Stage and its workplace culture. But maybe from elsewhere in your career or what you’ve heard from peers, what do you recognize from your own life that’s in “Best Available”?
Wolf:
There’s a lot of complex, manipulative tactics from multiple characters to get what they want. The nonprofit sector has operated in a space of scarcity for its whole life and I think scarcity breeds a competitive feeling of protecting one’s own little fiefdom inside an organization. That can lead to really messy, undermining behavior of people on board and staff.
Spector: There is a lot of that dynamic in the play, but I think it was important for me that everybody in the play feels like they are doing what is best for the theater. It’s just that everybody has a very different idea about what that means.
Q: Mina, you left your leadership role at Crowded Fire in December. How’s your life been since then?
Morita:
I’ve felt a little bit like a teenager. I’m kind of popping my head up and being like, “What’s happening? Hey, world!” I’m quite revived.
I’m going to enjoy freelancing for a little bit. And then as the right occasion comes along, there will be perhaps one last long foray (into theater leadership). But I want to be thoughtful because I don’t need it. I want that to be something that is an excellent match.