A Eulogy for Another Closing Non-Profit Theatre
The things that work for us when we are young will stop working eventually
I’m bacccckkkkk. Last Saturday, my brother got married. Last Sunday, I was horizontal all day. Thanks for letting me miss a week.
I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. Like many things this month, I am also taking a bit of a break with the project as I recalibrate for unemployment and so on. I’ll pick a new organization come August and we’ll continue on then.
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…most professional artists lead precarious lives both psychologically and economically.
- W. McNeil Lowry (1963)
from An Ideal Theater, edited by Todd London
I can be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of person.
It was a month, maybe two, before I graduated from undergrad and I had no idea what was coming next. I figured I would move to Seattle because that’s where pretty much everyone I knew was going but beyond that, your guess would have been as good as mine.
That was about the time my playwriting professor told me he knew a managing director at a Seattle theatre that was looking for an intern. I got on the phone with her quickly and by the end of my call, I think, I had the internship.
On Pride weekend 2010, I moved to Seattle. In early July, I started as the management intern for Book-It Repertory Theatre.
As it was an unpaid internship, I simultaneously picked up a job working in the Intiman Theatre box office (right before it publicly and spectacularly fell apart for a time) and settled into my post-graduation adult summer.
My first task was to take notes during a symposium-style meeting with a literacy specialist. Book-It was coming up on a strategic report and was accessing their mission statement, particularly what it actually meant “to inspire our audiences to read.” I love taking notes and I took notes. They were very detailed and very extensive which everyone loved. I felt like I understood the culture of Book-It and settled in quickly. It was a nice soft landing for new grad life.
By the end of the summer, Book-It decided to hire a Development Associate and I applied. The Development Director wanted to explore all the candidates so I went through the whole interview process and it was clear that I was the most qualified. From this far away, this doesn’t surprise me even though I was pretty “green” in terms of theatre admin. I went into my time at Book-It without knowing what “regional theatre” meant or what a Board of Directors did, but I did already have about a decade's worth of job experience. In terms of knowing how to work, I was ready.
The Development Director offered me the part-time job and I took it. I kept my box office job at Intiman until the end of the season but, by the start of 2011, my first full year in Seattle, my only day job was Book-It Repertory Theatre.
I often say my time in Seattle is what turned me into an adult and I think Book-It was a big part of that. There was a very quick crash course in what it meant to work in regional theatre (because that is not something you learn in an undergraduate arts education but the theatre education rant is one for a different day). I also learned how to ask questions that would get me to the bottom of subtext and great hacks for sealing a bunch of envelopes quickly.
After I missed a step post our annual fundraising gala and was the reason we were delayed in receiving donations from the night, I learned that mistakes don’t have to be life or death. They are mistakes, everyone makes them, and you work hard to correct them as quickly as you can. Additionally, I should have learned that if you make a mistake, tell someone so they can help you. I synthesized that lesson later so I eventually got to it but…I could have learned it much faster.
The staff was made up of a few youngsters like myself but was, in large part, powerhouse middle aged women. I spent my time being incredibly observant and learning what leadership did and did not look like. I watched what they came up against as some of the few visible high-powered women that I saw in the theatrical space. Simultaneously, I learned how to work across a generation gap. As much as I had to learn, I also had stuff to teach. Like what “totes” meant when I threw it into an internal email. Or “obvs.” Or “LOL.” …I explained a lot of slang.
In the three years I was there, I felt really taken care of. There was laughter and free-flowing wine from the wine ottoman. There was that very special camaraderie you get when working in non-profit theatre. There was support of outside projects. There was a real investment in helping me grow. So much so that when I told the Managing Director I had applied to grad school, her first response was, “No you didn’t.” Her second response was to figure out how to help me with the next steps.
Well, I got into grad school so that was the next step.
At the end of my last day in the office, it was just the Marketing Director and I. Most of the floor was dark and I stood in the doorway with the box of my stuff and looked back at her. She is an incredible person and had been a real champion of me, a great friend, and would not let me pay for a meal or a drink if she could help it. I was sad, very sad, to leave and I knew I would miss it a lot. I squeaked out a “good-bye” and turned to go.
When I closed the door, I knew it was the right thing to do to leave - to leave Book-It, to leave Seattle, to leave Washington State.
Because there is the flip side too. Non-profit theatre admin is a beast.
I worked so much. Even when I was an intern or part-time, I was working as close to full-time as I could. That was a me-thing but it also was an everyone thing. There weren’t enough hours in a day for a staff of 13 to put together a full season and a prestigious education program, and find ways to keep ourselves a-float at the same time.
By the time I left, I was making roughly $30,000 a year. As a mid-20s single person with roommates, that seemed like more than enough. And financially, I made it. But for the amount of work I did, any of us did, no one was making enough money. Including the theatre.
The first time I was handed a grant check, I threw it back at the Managing Director because it was $35,000 and that was a lot more money than I could wrap my head around at the time. And, knowing what I know now, that was nothing but a small drop in the bucket.
I learned that I never wanted to be responsible for a budget that was not my own. At the theatre, I wasn’t personally, really, but it sure felt like it. You could hear the anxiety in everyone’s voices, particularly around fundraising campaigns and the gala. There is a reason why development in theatre has an incredibly high turnover; it is a nearly impossible task. I basically decided I didn’t ever want to work in development again. Or theatre admin.
Side note: I ended up working in higher ed development while in grad school so I wasn’t successful in walking away from that sort of position. And then I also worked in theatrical licensing which is just theatre admin. It’s hard to get away from stuff like that when those are the skills on your resume.
Of course, there was dealing with supervisors. The first one I had was pretty good, we got along decently most of the time. After she left, the next one was…a different story. (The Marketing Director warned us this would be the case; we should have listened.) She had ever changing ideas of what she wanted to accomplish. I would finish a task and she would immediately tell me it was wrong, even when I had done everything exactly as she asked. Her anxiety entered the room first, incredulously throwing out demands, before taking a moment to breathe and ask questions. She made me cry numerous times.
A Board of Directors is a Board of Directors is a Board of Directors. They were all very nice and I got along with one of them incredibly well. But ultimately, they weren’t theatre people. They understood money or marketing or had great connections to people and/or companies. We spent a lot of time doing behind-the-scenes kind of events but that’s not as important as the survival of the theatre. When your task is keeping something alive, the money to do it will be the focus.
You know, at the time, I felt like I had seemingly endless energy. Sitting at my desk all those hours, I jealously watched working artists while spending too much time on a program donor list or learning another admin skill. And then I was in shows and writing plays on the side. I had endless energy and I was exhausted. It felt both terrible and what was supposed to be happening.
But the things that work for you in the past, will not always work for you.
That is a lesson I think theatre, non-profit theatre especially, is struggling to come to terms with.
The regional theatre movement really came to fruition in the 60s, financially spearheaded by the Ford Foundation and drove by three women theatrical pioneers. The purpose of the Ford Foundation’s Humanities in the Arts program was to make it possible to be a working artist outside of New York without having to be on the road all the time. It was the basis for the hierarchical system as we know it now, a system that starts with the Board of Directors at the top.
It’s not working.
This week, Book-It announced that it is closing after 33 years. They have canceled their already announced upcoming season and, according to the Seattle Times, unceremoniously laid off most of the staff of 18. Not only that, but the roughly 300 part-time workers and artists tapped for the next year are also suddenly without jobs.
Being laid off or losing work is terrible in any situation. It is especially hard in a field where we’ve been trained to talk about working in the arts as a dream and then a privilege. Not as a livelihood. Which means we also end up forfeiting employment safety and protections that many other sectors get inherently. Meanwhile, you also have to cobble together enough money for yourself, your family, your dependents to live on while trying to explain to lots of people, including a Board of Directors, that you are not just a line item on a budget. Not to mention the existential stress of constantly having to explain why art is important in general, why it is important to your community specifically, and why it is necessary to you personally.
No matter where you are in the field - Broadway, regional theatres, touring companies, community theatres, universities, schools, licensing companies, representation agencies, admin offices, unions - there is always instability. Somewhere along the line there are always precarious elements to a life in the arts.
I know what I am saying is nothing new. It is what theatre-makers, and artists in general, have been pointing out as systematic issues for a long time. The instability of the field is a major barrier to actually being in the field. And that barrier creates so many other barriers, particularly for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent and other marginalized communities. It also adds to the general inaccessibility of the art form across the board.
I wish that I, and so many of us, could actually spend some energy on these issues. But again, survival is necessary and plain survival will always be in the driver’s seat.
As a recently laid-off person myself, I am entering into a(nother) season of trying to quickly find a financially viable job that will also leave me time to make art and have a personal life (whatever that means). I would much rather be spending my time doing what I want to be doing, what I should be doing, and what many people in my life would tell me to be doing - theatre and writing.
It’s an uphill battle, systemically, financially, and culturally and I would love to have ideas of what next steps could be. But, at the very least, I hope the next steps are simply that: the next steps. In the forward direction.
Addendum: This is not an all-the-time theatre specific newsletter, just my musings for the week. If you are interested in keeping up with theatre news, I recommend
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