Interview by Gillian Claus Photography by Joey Pisacane
Red Ladder Theatre Company redladder.org Facebook redladdertheatrecompany Twitter redladderco
Red Ladder Theatre Company Karen Altree Piemme Karen Altree Piemme is the director of Red Ladder Theatre Company, a nationally acclaimed, awardwinning social justice theater company. After moving to the area 25 years ago and raising her daughter here, Karen considers herself a native. She squeezes in some time for performing in ShakesBEERience and freelance directing around the Bay Area. How did Red Ladder first form? John McCluggage, assistant director at San Jose Repertory Theatre, came out to the Living Stage Theatre Company to see our performance workshops in the federal prison system in 1990. He raised a bunch of money to bring us out here on residency to train his first set of actors. And finally he just asked, “Can’t you come out here and help me create this company?” So I left and came out here in 1993. Been here ever since. What is the significance of the name? It is this iconic image. Red is a bold color. You say the word, and everyone knows what that looks like. It is not pink or blue, so it is not about being a boy or a girl. And there is the significance of the ladder, so it is about climbing higher and reaching beyond. Have you always been interested in social justice? Has that always been your bent? It has. I remember when I was studying in school and everyone was asking, “What do you do when you go to the city, and how do you get an agent?” And I responded, “What do you do if you are not necessarily planning to go to the city or look for an agent?” And people just kind of looked at me like I had three heads. There were maybe one or two people on the faculty who
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understood what I was talking about and were excited about my doing sociopolitical kinds of projects. What excites you about your work at Red Ladder? Red Ladder is founded on the principle that creativity is what is most fundamental to us as human beings. That is what we do. Fish swim, birds fly, human beings create and make things up. That’s when people are most connected to themselves: when they are being creative. And there are a whole host of people within our community that are cut off from their ability to tap into their creativity—so we work with homeless and runaway youth, pregnant and parenting teens, kids in the foster system, juvenile halls, and men and women in prison. Why go to prisons? The men and women that we work with in prison—there are so many of these guys that we work with that were sentenced as adults at the age of 16. These are guys who bought the lie, “All you are going to amount to is a thug, or a hoodlum, or a gangbanger.” And so, they essentially fulfilled what they were told they would become. Within the performance environment, they are able to try on the shoes of someone else, and their minds go to all the different things that they can do and be. What challenges do you face in the prison environment? We have had occasions when we show up for the final performance and a person who was a lead in the show is not there because they’ve been transferred to another institution or they’re on lockdown. Two weeks ago, there was a race riot in one of the facilities we program. We work there