Lisa Mulcahy - Building the Successful Theater Company

Building

the Successful

Theater Company

SECOND EDITION

Building

the Successful

Theater Company

SECOND EDITION

BY LISA MULCAHY

2011 Lisa Mulcahy

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

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Published by Allworth Press

An imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc.

10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010

Cover and interior page design by Natalya Balnova

Page composition/typography by Integra Software Services, Pvt., Ltd., Pondicherry, India

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mulcahy, Lisa.

Building the successful theater company / By Lisa Mulcahy. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-58115-761-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eBook ISBN 978-1-58115-778-9

1. Theatrical companiesUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.

PN2297.A2M85 2011

792.09730904dc22

2010035986

Printed in Canada

FOR MY FATHER, WILLIAM MULCAHY

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the following wonderful people for helping me invaluably during my work on this book:

First of all, at Allworth Press, Tad Crawford and Nicole Potter for their support of me as a writer and their tremendous guidance, trust, and encouragement. To Kate Lothman at Allworth for her professionalism, warmth, and assistance as well.

To all of the amazing artists and administrators who participated in interviews for this book, I give my utmost gratitude. Your honesty, the generosity you show in sharing your wisdom, and your immense skills inspire me and will no doubt inspire scores of readers. Gilbert Cates, Aaron Davidman, Terrence Dwyer, Sheldon Epps, David Fuller, Corey Fischer, Michael Gennaro, Leslie Jacobson, Dona Lee Kelly, Susan Kosoff, Rick Lombardo, Susan Albert Lowenberg, Kevin Mayes, Susan Medak, Richard Pletcher, Ralph Remington, Jack Reuler, Mitzi Sales, Harriet Sheets, David Zak, and Paul Zuckerman: Each of you provided me with your valuable time, insight, and memories, and Im honored to be able to pass what I learned from you on to others.

I also wish to thank the following theater personnel for their specific assistance in helping me arrange the logistics of interviews and for providing me with supplementary materials: Sheila Boyd, Brian Colvern, Kay Elliott, Elisa Hale, Terrence Keane, Emily Lister, Stacey Moore, Jason Raitt, Allison Rawlings, Jane Staab, Sara Truog, Shay Wafer, and Helene Sanghri York.

I would like to give a very special thank you to Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage.

For special technical assistance, I would like to thank Geoff Grammel and Johanne Cimon of The Most Office in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, whose work is excellent.

I would also like to give a special thank you to my uncle, Gary Porter, who provided additional technical guidance, and to my aunt, Judith Porter, for her special support and enthusiasm.

To my entire family, thank you for your support. To my posse of friends, you know who you are. To all of phenomenal artists Ive encountered throughout my long life in the theater, thanks for great times.

To the Brandeis University theater community, especially Ted Kazanoff, thanks for a great education. Thank you also to Edward Albee for giving me a wonderful break. To my mother, Joan Mulcahy, you mean the world to me and I cant believe I am lucky enough to be your daughter. Thanks, Mom, to you and Dad for instilling me with strength and confidence and standing by my side every minute. Youre the greatest.

Introduction

What Makes a Theater Company Successful?

Passion. Blind faith. Talent. Navet. Focus. A burning desire to say something important.

These are some of the qualities possessed by those brave individuals who enter the incredibly challenging field of professional theater. Its been said by many, including me, that in order to take on a career in the dramatic arts, your need to do it must supersede virtually every other desire you could possibly have. To make it, you must make sacrifice your best friend: sacrifice of your time, sacrifice of your financial security, sacrifice of your personal life, sacrifice, many times, of every last shred of your peace of mind.

You must also be a very tough cookie. Your self-esteem had better be bulletproof, and not simply in terms of the endless professional rejection and struggle you will invariably face. You also need to know who you are and like who you are 24/7, because you cant measure success in the theater by any conventional business model yardstick. Its very, very hard to get rich running a theater company, for example, to be able to see those profit numbers pile up on paper, as one could if he or she was running, say, a Fortune 500 company (or nearly any other type of company, for that matter).

So why do it, then? Well, theres passion. Blind faith. Talent. Navet. Focus. A burning desire to say something importantand feel free to add your personal reasons to that list. The world is, indeed, fortunate and better off for the fact that there are those people who live to act, direct, write, stage manage, design for the stage, work tech crew for shows, and, perhaps the most daunting prospect of all, found and build their own theater companies.

This book will examine the processes and practicalities involved in running a professional theater company. I was privileged to interview at length the key personnel who run thirteen of this countrys most successful, free-spirited, and artistically vital theater companies, and I learned more from them than I ever thought possible (even though Ive worked in professional theater for many years myself). These folks do not pull punches. Theyre realistic, due to personal ideology as well as from hard experience. Theyre also as excited about their companies today as the day they started working on them. Their artistic and business perspectives are fluid and fresh, no matter how many years (in some cases, decades) their companies have been operational. Theyre survivors, both artistically and financially, and theyre inspirations.

I choose to let these fascinating subjects tell their stories themselves in a series of directly quoted anecdotes that, to me, feel a lot like the type of discourse that might take place after a show, over a late, lingering dinner, when youthe hopeful, eager noviceare lucky enough to be seated next to a legendary elder whos in the mood to reminisce for awhile. What will be discussed adds up to a full explanation of what factors make a solid theater company develop and persevere.

Diversity was a key component in my selection of the theater companies I wanted to include within this book. Some of the companies well be examining are traditional repertory organizationsthat is, in terms of definition, a resident company of actors performing a number of different shows throughout a set season. Other companies are more concerned with a very specific artistic concentrationproducing plays that speak to multicultural issues, for instance. Some bust all myth, expectation, and convention, and that is their mission statement.

So what makes a theater company successful? Primarily, its the importance of combining a sharp artistic focus, a smart and objective business viewpoint, a fully operational approach to physical production in any given venue, and a big-picture plan.

Its also very crucial to understand that art and commerce do indeed walk hand-in-hand. Successful theater company personnel know when to be creative and when to take their heads out of the clouds and get down to the nitty-gritty of making the money they need to keep going. They know how to translate abstract artistic visions into clear and concise sound bites that attract funders. They know the importance of applying for grants. They know the value of networking and thinking out of the box about marketing and strategic planning.