Post #2: The Summer, In Brief

On My Decision To Pursue and Then Later Accept The Position of Artistic Director At The Hangar Theatre

Post #2: The Summer, In Brief

I have realized (again, remember, code for “discovered in therapy”) that doing new things is scary for me.  Sometimes I get off on this scariness – like going to a firing range to shoot shotguns for my 37^th birthday, or traveling to new places.  But sometimes, the inability to visualize is just terrifying. 

Kevin Moriary

Peter Flynn

Jen Waldman

I had no idea how to prepare for the summer.  The previous Artistic Director of the Hangar, Jen Waldman, was basically as kind and helpful as someone could be, as were prior Artistic Directors Peter Flynn and Kevin Moriarty.  But some things must be experienced.  And running the Hangar in the summer was one of those things.

Normally, when rehearsing a play, I look forward to my day off like a traveler in a desert stumbling toward an oasis.  When I was rehearsing a play this summer, my “days off” were often busier than a normal rehearsal day.  And exhausting as that could be, it was actually the transitions during actual rehearsals days that were truly challenging: staying in an artistic and creative space while having to use my ten-minute break to problem-solving logistical challenges.  It’s hard to wear two hats at the same time, especially when, like me, you don’t have the cheekbones for hats.  In a funny way, it’s like directing a play, especially on a thrust: the transitions are often harder to stage than the scenes themselves.

Although the rehearsal days were longer, they were easier in many ways than the non-rehearsal days.  Why?  Because the energy of rehearsal reflects and recycles the energy you put into it.  For me, administration isn’t like that.  At least, not yet.  There are certainly parts of AD’ing that are incredibly rewarding, but it doesn’t replenish the way that exchanging energy with artists in rehearsals does.

And then there was the driving.  While I have lived in New York City for my entire adult life, I know how to drive.  I just don’t enjoy it.  And I especially don’t enjoy when I’m about to be late, and have four phone calls to make, and suddenly find myself on (another) one-way road taking me in the opposite direction from where I need to be.  Seriously, one of the greatest accomplishments of the summer was figuring out the roads of downtown Ithaca.

So why did I decide to apply for the gig?

Well, much to my surprise, I discovered I really loved the day-to-day of Artistic Directing.  As a freelancer, working at other people’s theatre, my critical mind would inevitably kick-in and wonder, “How I would do this differently if I were AD.” It threw me back to middle or high school, when I was a young actor in the school plays who had no idea he was going to be a director.  I would sit in the back of the house, and wonder why Mrs. Anzuini didn’t have Roses and Strawberries and Milk enter from the back of the house in the big number of Oliver!

A photo from "Who Will Buy?", from Oliver, that I found on the internet.

Just as becoming a director let me try out those staging ideas, being an AD let me experiment with the administrative ones.  Some of them worked, just like I imagined, and some of them worked in ways I would’ve never imagined.  And many of them didn’t.  And that was okay, too.  Like being in a rehearsal.  The confidence to try and fail and move on was integral to surviving the summer.

Christy Perez, Hangar SM Apprentice, making pasta!

I also loved being the bridge between staff and artists and technical crew.  Like the director of a musical has to make sure that dance and music and design are all talking to each other, the AD becomes the intersection of all the various contributors.  I’ve been the artist enough that that was familiar to me.  But getting to know what the full-year staff and shop heads have to do to make the theatre run was undoubtedly the most educational, and the most humbling, part of my summer. I don’t know how Adam Zonder is able to find such extraordinary interns and staff, but spending time with them, learning about how their passion for the theatre motivates them (I’m thinking about Kerri Lynch talking to our Aces group before Constellations, and Christy Perez and the countless conversations she and I had, along with so many others) all served to teach me how little I knew about the industry in which I’ve spent my entire adult life.

There are lots of other things that made me want to pursue the job full-time: the great joy of being able to hire artists I know and believe in, like Suzanne Agins, Linsay Firman, Shoko Kambar, Suzanne Chesney and Nick Francone.  The joy of getting to meet new artists that I can’t wait to work with again (just about everyone who worked on the mainstage, honestly – all brilliant and hard-working and kind and generous). 

And then there were little things as well – all the artists and teachers from Syracuse who joined us as artists and audience members, all that gorgeous Orange in Ithaca.  Annie the Muffin Lady (who bakes fresh muffins for the first rehearsals) and her husband Tony, who took me and Rafa on their sailboat on Cayuga Lake, where every hour feels like one full day of vacation.  The Hangar Board, who host dinners for the mainstage artists.  The Drama League directors and the Lab Company, who impressed me daily with their courage and hard work and bravery.  My Associate Artistic Director, Brad Raimondo, who made it impossible to imagine a more brilliant ally. 

For those of you who have never been to Ithaca, it’s hard to describe the magic that permeates the town (unofficial motto: “ten square miles surrounded by reality”).  But even more than the Hangar itself was the way the equation of the theatre in that community played itself out.  The people who come to see plays at the Hangar really want to be there.  They care about the play.  They care about the institution.  When we announced that we’d be re-introducing a Fifth Show into the summer season it was greeted with applause every time. 

Summer theatres like ours can’t necessarily provide the same resources that a LORT can.  Our pay isn’t as high.  The housing isn’t as good.  And all summer I wrestled with trying to answer the question of what we can provide that might make up for that.  The answer is the community.  Something magical happens in the summer.  And something especially magical happens in Ithaca.     

And it’s the reason, ultimately, that I decided to accept the job.  I had the privilege of seeing how that magic was conjured, and what it meant to everyone associated with the theatre: artists, staff, technicians, interns, and most of all the audience and community.

But before I accepted the job, of course, I had to apply for it…

On My Decision To Pursue and Then Later Accept The Position of Artistic Director At The Hangar Theatre

On My Decision To Pursue and Then Later Accept The Position of Artistic Director At The Hangar Theatre

Post #1:  To Be An AD Or Not To Be An AD

Since I was an undergrad, I can remember people telling me that I should be an Artistic Director.  The effect of this, of course, was that it made me want to do everything but.  I have never responded well to “should.” 

Beatrice Basso

And yet, over the last few years, I found the idea scratching at my imagination, like a child seeking permission to enter her/his parents’ bedroom.  I even started applying for jobs that sounded interesting or appropriate, checking ArtSearch daily with the religious fervor of a fanatic.  I never got a single interview for any of the Associate positions for which I applied (the ever-insightful Beatrice Basso consoled me, in her Italian accent: “Michelino, you are too big for those jobs,” which I’ve chosen to interpret as a referendum on my personality, not body size).  

When I got too old for the Associate gigs, I threw my hat in for Artistic Directorships.  With one exception, from a theatre far too large for someone with no institutional experience like me, my resumes went unanswered, ignored like love letters sent to someone way out of your league.

Marco Barricelli

And yet, my friends and colleagues, people I really trusted, insisted that being an Artistic Director would be a good match for me.  Marco Barricelli, who is incapable of telling a lie, would say, “They’d be lucky to have you.”  Lucky to have me? Me, who reveled in 20 years of freelancing? Me, who prided himself on being a creature of chaos? Me, who could barely make a budget for myself, let alone for an institution? Basking in my own self-deprecation professionally, as I did romantically so often in my twenties, I thought, “Really, who’d be lucky to have me?”

A few years ago, rather unintentionally, however, the unlikeliest thing happened.  After years of swearing I’d never do it and a decade after it was fashionable for someone my age, I founded a theatre company: The Upstart Creatures.  Every other month, we present a reading of a politically relevant, large-cast play and build a three or four course gourmet meal around it. And admission is free.  I have described it, often, as the best thing I do with my life, and at every event, I am humbled by the artists who volunteer their time and talent for free, rehearsing and cooking and serving.  I am humbled by the Pastors Scott and Tiffany at the Metro Baptist Church on West 40^th St., who welcomed us into their Sanctuary Arts Program and who host our events.  And I’m humbled by everyone who shows up and attends and engages and eats and watches our little shows, giving whatever they can at the end so that we can continue presenting for free.

Me at an Upstarts Creature event.

My goal as the AD of The Upstarts was to produce plays that I would want to both direct and attend.  As a freelance director, I have never agreed to direct a play I didn’t love. La Jolla Artistic Director Christopher Ashley, when I was assisting him a fifteen years ago, would like to torture me with “what if” scenarios:  “What if you got asked to direct a play on Broadway you didn’t like? Or just sort of liked?”  But as much as I’d love the paycheck, that wasn’t for me.  It’s not just me being finicky, the way I can be with food (“You cooked that broccoli for how long?”).  I know that if I’m not passionate about something, if I can’t really get behind it, if I don’t believe, then I’m not going to be able to muster that special thing that lets other people believe.  And it makes sense, I suppose, that the company I founded incorporated the two things about which I feel most passionately: theatre and food.  And did I mention it’s free?  Some of my happiest moments are watching undergrads in our audience, sitting next to more traditional (read: older) audience members, eating and watching and interacting with each other. 

Our little company has prospered (our first gala is November 7^th!), and much to my surprise, I enjoyed all of the admin stuff that scared me away from Artistic Directorship in the first place.  Or rather, I should say, my idea of being an AD (my therapist and I can figure out where this came from) was of someone very organized, sort of boring, sort of patriarchal, who had sacrificed creativity for authority. 

But with The Upstarts, I learned I didn’t have to be any of those things to lead a company;  that Artistic Directorship wasn’t directing’s nemesis.  It was its fraternal twin: a creative endeavor, just as fulfilling and exciting on its own terms.  I directed the first three Upstarts events, until I realized that directing those readings was the least interesting part for me.  By getting an incredible roster of guest directors (Suzanne Agins, Andy Goldberg, Estefania Fadul, Morgan Gould) to direct the readings, it left me free to do the stuff I didn’t have experience in: producing and cooking for 100 people.  

While running The Upstarts, I realized (code for “discovered during therapy”) that to be a good AD you have to let go of the idea that you’d be the best director for any given project.  It’s the subtext that a freelance director has to carry like armor, shield and weapon at all times, because it’s the only way to win a job.  But it’s anathema to good artistic directing.  Our last event, for example, Rituals of Signs and Transformations, (by Sa’dallah Wannous, translated by Robert Myers & Nada Saab) was brought to the company by its director, Andrew Goldberg.  It was first performed in the Syrian playwright’s home country twenty years ago.  The closest it’s come to the English-speaking world is a production at the Comedy Française.  This is not a play I would’ve ever stumbled upon on my own. This one was Andy’s baby, and I was honored to help midwife it.  

Margaret Shackell-Dowell

All of these things were going through my mind when the President of the Hangar Board (and now a great friend and ally) Margaret Shackell-Dowell emailed me, four hours before I was going to get on a plane to Istanbul, asking if I wanted to apply for the interim position.  (I’ve already blogged about how I became the interim artistic director, so I won’t get into that here).

So what happened during my Interim Year that made me apply for the full-time job?  Come back next week to read that post…

             

How I Became An Interim Artistic Director

How I Became An Interim Artistic Director

This post is the first of an ongoing series about my adventures and escapades as the Interim Artistic Director at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York.  

How did I become an interim artistic director?

Four hours before I boarded a plane to Istanbul, I received an email from Margaret B. Shackell, the president of the Hangar Theatre Board.  The artistic director was stepping down. I had been recommended. Was I interested in applying for the Interim Artistic Director position at the Hangar Theatre, in Ithaca, New York?

You bet your ass I was.

I thought about emailing Margaret back, but then decided against it – I would be in transit for a day, and I knew they wanted to act fast.  Besides, everybody knows that fortune favors the bold. So instead I googled her and discovered she was also an accounting professor at Cornell.  I found her office number online. When I called, it rolled to voicemail. Her cellphone number was on the outgoing message. I called her cell.  She picked up. I told her I really wanted this job, and I would write a letter before I got on the plane. (Thanks, Rafa, for packing for us both – I’d love to pretend this is because I had to write that letter, but we both know you’d have done it anyway because I hate packing so very very much)

The Hangar Theatre is a 350-seat thrust in Ithaca. The first summer I spent there was in 2001, as a Drama League Directing Fellow.  The second was two years later, when then-Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty invited me back to direct Julius Caesar with the Lab Company, which would later be re-mounted as a school tour.  Here are a list of people I met during those two summers with whom I’m still in touch, all this time later:

Dana Harrell

David Snider

Lindsey Gates

Kevin Moriarty

Lisa Bushlow

Bob Moss

Kali Quinn

Lyndsay Ruotolo

Tom Picasso

Josh Canfield

Courtney Bell

Noshir Dalal

Jennifer Joan Thompson

Amy Schluennes

Emily Fink

Ian Lowe

Jade Rothman

Rachel Fleit

Dan Knechtges

Wendy Dann 
Adam Zonder

That’s how many I can list off the top of my head, and the easiest way for me to show how influential those summers were to me.  The inimitable and magic nature of the Hangar didn’t stop for me with the people I met and the collaborations I formed. It had to do with what was expected of me as an artist.  

As a Hangar Drama League director, working in the Wedge (the experimental second stage) was the first time in my professional life that I was given the space to choose what I wanted to direct. It was a luxury to which I was so unused that it bewildered me at first: what kind of work did I want to make? What was important to me? What did I need to communicate to the world?

I did not direct this Wedge show but I found the picture online and I loved it so I'm using it because the internet didn't exist when I was in the Lab. Neither did electricity.

I directed four (4!) plays that summer: The Liddy Plays by Brooke Berman (world premiere), Orilla del Mundo by Hillary Bell (original musical), Peter Rabbit and Me (KIDDSTUFF) and The Pelican by Strindberg.  I think it’s safe to say that the Hangar is the only place where someone could have directed two world premieres, a children’s play, and one of Strindberg’s most nefarious drawing room plays all in the span of two months.

When I returned, two summers later, to work on Julius Caesar, I brought with me two designers whose work and friendship would have profound influences on me in the future: Oana Botez on costumes, and Mimi Lien on sets (MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient, 2015).  It was the first time I got to direct Shakespeare professionally. It was where I met and first cast Lab Company member Jennifer Joan Thompson, with whom I've worked at least ten times since, including my off-Broadway premiere. Jennifer is also a writer now, and I was honored when she asked me to direct her first piece, Booksmart at Studio Tisch.  Fellow Vassar alum Emily Robin Fink and Noshir, this awesome ninja I’d met in Rochester a few years earlier were in that production as well, as you will see when you check out the awesome lab video we’re making this year.

Downtown Ithaca.  I mean, come on.

I’ve had the privilege of directing at Syracuse Stage a few times over the last decade, during Tim Bond’s tenure (and whoever takes over – please remember me! I love it there!).  At least once during every rehearsal process, I’d drive down to Ithaca, poke my head into the Hangar, admire the renovation, and say hi to whoever was in the office downtown.  It’s that kind of place.  It stays with you. I’ve directed god-knows how many productions at this point in my life, professionally and at colleges, but the ones I did at the Hangar stay with me. I remember the people I met there.  It changes you.  It had a huge influence on me as a young artist, and continues to do so now that I’m no longer that young of an artist.

You bet your ass I wanted that job.

The 2016 season, which out-going Artistic Director Jen Waldman had already chosen, is glorious.

In Istanbul, I found out I would be granted an interview. Two days later, over Skype, from Bulgaria, said interview occurred by the Search Committee (comprised of Margaret, a few other board members and Managing Director Josh Friedman).    Luckily, I had been a finalist to be the Artistic Director of a LORT theater a few months before, so I could anticipate many of the questions that would be asked.  

Here are some of them:

1. What kind of artists do you like to work with?
2. What role do you think the Hangar should play in its community?
3. Describe your leadership style.
4. Which plays would you want to direct and how would you market the season?

1. What kind of artists do you like to work with?

An Upstarts Event.

I answered this question with the criteria I use to determine whether or not I’m going to ask someone to join my NYC-theater company, The Upstart Creatures.  Every other month, the Upstarts present a reading of a socio-politically relevant play and prepare a four-course meal to accompany the piece.  And the whole thing is free. We don’t get paid to rehearse, we don’t get paid to cook. And we pride ourselves on presenting top-caliber readings and delicious food. 

The criteria I use is: brilliant, hard-working, and kind.  Brilliant is a must. We work in a saturated market.  As the e-mails flooding the Hangar casting e-mail account remind me daily, the competition in our field is crushing.  That means that brilliance is the price of admission.  Next,  given the relatively challenging material our company is drawn to (one of our criteria for the plays we pick: if you can see it on Broadway, we don’t need to do it), the only way to present a reading of the caliber that will make us proud is by using hard-working actors who are willing to work on the material outside of the 4-hour rehearsal we schedule, the way any director worth their salt needs 10 hours of prep to knock a reading out of the ballpark.  Finally, when you’re in a kitchen with 75 people waiting to be fed and not a dish is ready, you better believe you want the people around you to be kind.  Just like, when you’re in the last hour of a ten-out-of-twelve and a prop breaks and a costume tears and a scene that we never quite got in the rehearsal room feels even worse on stage, if the people you’re working with aren’t kind, you will never find your way to a solution. Also, why not be kind? You’ll live longer.

2.                What role do you think the Hangar should play in its community?

I’ve always loved the idea of a regional theater being not just a place to go to see plays, but where the people of the community spend real time. That’s how I answered the second question.  To use my husband’s business talk, what’s the added value that an audience member gets with their ticket value?

3.                Describe your leadership style.

Like most interesting things, leadership style is difficult to describe, but I tried nonetheless.  As a director, my favorite response to a question has become, “I don’t know.”  In my 20s, this was incredibly difficult for me to say – as a young director, and a young artist, and a young person, I wanted to know. I felt like I needed to know.  And the worst kind of collaborators make you feel bad for not knowing.  But as I matured into my 30s, I found the joy in not knowing.  That a director can do all the prep, all the research, know the script intimately, and still allow themselves to be surprised in rehearsals. It took me 15 years to begin to make sense of what JoAnne Akalaitis had been screaming at me for three years at Juilliard.

4.                Which plays would you want to direct and how would you market the season?

Finally, there was the season itself.  I felt anxiety from the board about this – would I be interested in producing a season I hadn’t chosen?  Maybe, with a different season, the answer would’ve been different.  But (and this will be one of the many places I will thank Outgoing Artistic Director Jen Waldman), I loved this season. I was wild about this season.   Running the Upstarts, I had learned that I needed to be as excited about a play I was producing as I needed to be about a play I was directing. That’s not a low bar.  The Hangar 2016 season, however, made this easy for me.

12 Portions of Pasta, made by the Upstart Creatures.

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti is a one-woman show about a woman making Italian food that she serves to the audience while discussing the rollercoaster ride of her love life and her romantic escapades.  I assured the board that I was the only director they’d interviewed who had made pasta, from scratch, for 75 people (for the Upstarts reading of You Are (If You Think You Are) by Pirandello, directed by Suzanne Agins).  Food + theater is my jam, so to speak.  

In The Heights is possibly the second-best musical ever written, (after Hamilton), also written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  This is a musical about New York City (where I’ve lived for 20 years), about immigrants (I am an immigrant to this country, having moved from Israel when I was 6), and about the American Dream (hello, my life).  When I think about what’s happening in this country right now, a musical with this kind of diversity feels important, the way art needs to be important.

Constellations is a stunning two-hander about love and possibility that was part of MTC’s Sloan Project.  Two years ago, I received a Sloan Grant to write a play about the Ancient Roman scientist/philosopher Lucretius and his stunning epic treatise on physics and love and the world, De Rerum Natura. This is a smart play. This is a play that would need a really smart director. I knew who I wanted to direct this play immediately, and that made me very excited about producing it.

And Third, the last play written by Wendy Wasserstein.  Well, let’s just say that since Wendy passed away ten years ago (actually, nine years and eleven months, but who’s counting?), I feel like she’s been up there, looking down, helping me out when she can. This was one of those times.

Eddie Boroevich and Kathryn Grody in our original production of Third at Theater J.

I worked as Wendy’s typist for the last five years of her life. I was having dinner with Wendy when she met the wrestler who inspired this story. I directed the premiere of this play in Washington, D.C. when it was just a 60-minute two-hander. I sat in the walk-in closet with Wendy, late at night with Lucy sleeping in the main room, as she read to me the pages she had just scribbled that introduced the third character.  After a successful run in D.C., I developed the piece with Wendy into a full-length play.  I can say, with some confidence, that I know that play better than anyone else alive right now.

So, yeah, I could produce this season.

I talked about how I would market each play (I thought I’d flubbed this one horribly, but later Margaret told me I hadn’t, which was nice).  There were other questions – about time commitments, about the Lab Company (I’m going to devote another post in its entirety about the lab company because I’m so psyched about it), about Ithaca.  I flubbed  a few. I made some jokes, which luckily the wi-fi connection was strong enough to convey with some kind of authenticity over Skype. A few days later, back in the states, I was invited to chat with Adam Zonder, the production manager at the Hangar.

The one and only Adam Zonder

Adam has been at the Hangar for twenty years.  He is the institution’s living memory.  He can recite the budget and schedule for the summer with the kind of confidence and knowledge that I find somewhere between impressive and intimidating. As one board member joked with me later, “Just do what Adam says and you’ll be fine.”

Adam was the Production Manager both summers I had spent at the Hangar in the early ‘00s. Luckily, he didn’t hold the way I behaved then (I was young, alright!) against me. In his perfectly frank, undecorated way, he told me what was possible this summer and what wasn’t.  He told me what had worked in the past and what hadn’t.

It is easy, when you’ve never run a theater before, to be seduced by the trust and the power and the responsibility of the job. Adam was sobering without dampening my enthusiasm. He made the job real.

The one and only Josh Friedman

The next day I had an even longer meeting with the Managing Director, Josh Friedman.   Josh and I talked effortlessly – it has already turned out to be both a blessing and a curse, how easily (and much) he and I like to talk. But that meeting wasn’t an interview. It was a conversation, and it harkened back to a piece of advice my Vassar College directing mentor (and now good friend) Chris Grabowksi gave me when I was chubby and closeted and interviewing with Michael Kahn, JoAnne Akalaitis and Garland Wright for Juilliard: make it into a dialogue. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people. See how easy that time can be, while still conveying what you need to get across.  

And most of all (and I know it’s become so clichéd it’s almost not worth repeating) but be yourself. The weirder you are, the more important this is. There would be no point in me putting on a three-piece suit and presenting myself to the Board as an experienced administrator. If that’s who they wanted for this job, they wouldn’t have given me an interview. And if I managed to fool them and get the job by presenting myself that way, what a bore to have to be that.

Know who you are and sell that. I am a man-child. I am weird and funny and make jokes about my weight (I’m passing on carbs these days so that I don’t return from Mexico Jabba-sized) and my hair (I don’t wear it - it wears me). At the same time, I started and am still running a successful New York theater company, but our operating budget is in the mid-four digits. I have supported myself as a freelance director, sans trust fund, sans day job, sans inheritance, sans any of those things.  I know what makes a play good, and a good play. Twenty years in New York has given me access to an incredible network of artists. I will have lots to learn about how to run a theater. I will make mistakes. I will give it everything. I will be as a brilliant, hard-working and kind as I possibly can. If that’s who you want, give me the job.

Apparently, that’s who they wanted. I got the job the next day.