NCTC Fall 2020 Newsletter

OUR HOME FOR AR ORLD & US PREMIER OUTHAWARE QUEER BEHIND-THE-SCENES ALLIED F A L L 2 0 2 0 MMUNITY DRAMA C ATIVITY MUSICALS THEATRE NEW DUCATION CLASSES

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We acknowledge that New Conservatory Theatre Center is located on unceded land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, to whom we owe a collective debt.

We have directly benefited from this land and we are privileged to call it our artistic home.

newsflash!

• As a progressive theatre company dedicated to affecting personal & societal growth, enlightenment, and change through art, we stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the fight for racial justice. For more information on NCTC’s response to this ongoing movement for equality, visit us at https://www.nctcsf.org/In-Solidarity.

• On September 22nd, NCTC hosted its first ever virtual Legacy of Pride Party online! We celebrated all of the amazing projects NCTC has been working on while we’re away from the theatre, and our new designation as a San Francisco Legacy Business. If you missed it, or just want to watch it again, click here to watch it on YouTube. We also ended the evening with a quick Zoom after-party, and it was so wonderful to see our community together in real time for the first time in months. If it seems like you didn’t get your invitation to the event or just that you haven’t heard from NCTC in a while, you may not be subscribed to our mailing list. This is how we’re keeping our community regularly updated in the coming months. You can sign up to receive emails from us here.

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• Our Board of Directors has undergone quite a few changes in the last several months. Firstly, we want to say goodbye and bon voyage to Beverly Rose, who has relocated to Oregon with her husband. Thank you for your service! We have also elected a new Board Chair, long-time member Larry Vales. Former Board Chair Andrew Smith remains on the Board, and we thank him as well for his time at the helm. We have also gained two new Board members, Christopher Murriel and Nathan Williams. Dr. Murriel leads cancer research efforts as the Director of In Vivo Pharmacology at Atreca, Inc., and has been a fan of NCTC’s work for many years. Mr. Williams is a Senior Strategy Consultant VP at Wells Fargo and also serves on the Board of the Oakland Ballet. We are thrilled to welcome you to the NCTC family!

Larry Vales

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Christopher Murriel

Nathan Williams

With so many changes at NCTC during the pandemic, we want to update our most dedicated supporters on the organization’s financial situation, and show how we’ve been putting your contributions to work to continue creating art for the community. For an in-depth report, see page 6.

• The Conservatory is not just for kids anymore!

We have a whole program of Adult Drama Club workshops this fall, and expanded curriculum for the young ones as well. See page 8 for more info.

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• There are just a few episodes left for In Good Company, our original episodic podcast series on the somewhat kind of true story of a Queer theatre going through a pandemic.

The final episode will air on October 14, but all episodes will remain free and available for listening here. Mark your calendars, stay tuned, and make sure you’re signed up for our email list to receive an invitation to a special postshow talk with the cast and writers of In Good Company on October 23 at 6pm.

• Pay-what-you-wish tickets are now available for our first full-length radio play, The Law of Attraction by Patricia Milton. Originally intended for our 2020-21 Season, this world premiere play has been adapted to an audio-only format that will be available for listening October 14-November 18. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this thoughtful and hilarious comedy of errors, while still giving our supporters the chance to support the production of our work directly through ticket sales as they desire. Learn more about the play from Director and long-time NCTC staffer Nikki Meñez on page 11.

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HELP US KEEP THE ART ALIVE We cannot make this timely art or sustain the organization without your support.

With just ONE WEEK left in our Board Matching Challenge, we still have $10,000 remaining in the matching fund. ALL GIFTS, no matter the size, will be matched 1:1 if received by October 15.

Double your impact and help us claim the remainder of the matching funds with a gift at NCTCSF.ORG/DONATE

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There’s just no handbook for this kind of thing.

NCTC has had to learn to do many things we did not expect to do in the last seven months: creating a budget for an almost unknowable year ahead is just one of them. Fortunately, we have a team with a lot of imagination! To start, we had to take a deep breath and ask ourselves some pretty hard questions about what we absolutely must save and what gets put on hold - or gets tossed overboard altogether. I hope it is not surprising to you that our people are our top priority.

We have cut our budget back (for now) by nearly 40 percent – further cuts may be necessary. In spite of that, we are using what we have to keep artists working on projects, and to creatively address the challenges of shelter-in-place.

As you can see by the chart to the left, our lack of ticket income this year means we need to depend heavily on contributed income, the majority coming from individual donors.

You can also see that our budget priority remains our people.

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Our donors are helping us keep the art alive by enabling NCTC to: • Pivot our education programs to an online format, providing connectivity to students and paychecks to teaching artists • Expand our educational programming to include classes for adults • Write and produce an original podcast, providing paying work to actors, designers, and playwrights • Create a series of “micro-commissions” for our winter variety show webcast, providing an opportunity for up and coming queer artists to continue to create their unique work • Commission a new, timely script from Harrison David Rivers, the playwright who brought us This Bitter Earth, which will air later this winter • Develop online alternatives to our in-person Youth Aware tours • Continue to develop the scripts that are in our New Voices New Works pipeline through readings and workshops We are looking ahead to the safety of our artists, audiences, and students when we return to the space, and have invested in cleaning and safety supplies as well as ionizing equipment that we can use in the space to clean the air and all surrounding surfaces. We are also looking to the emotional well-being of our people by taking the time to have important conversations about what it means to be an activist and anti-racist theatre.

I am impressed and moved every day by the generosity, resilience, and creativity that surrounds us. Thank you for being part of our present, so we can look ahead to a bright future!

With deep appreciation,

Barbara Hodgen Executive Director

From8 an Adult Drama Club member: “I loved this summer’s reader’s theatre class so much that I have signed up for THREE classes this fall!” - Eve L.

In last spring’s newsletter, we shared with you the news that NCTC’s Youth Conservatory had, in just one week’s time, transitioned entirely to online Zoom classes to continue serving our students while safely sheltering in place. Here’s a little update on how that’s been going: - Our Teen Ensemble had just begun rehearsals for The Crucible when Covid-19 closures hit the Bay Area. Not ones to back down from a challenge, the cast rallied and produced a project called The Crucible Chronicles. In addition to improvised group work, each student filmed solo projects, creating a hilarious behind-the-scenes, confessional-style mockumentary of producing the play. You can watch a tutorial on “how to cry” in dramatic scenes here. Get your onions ready!

- In our mission to maintain theatre instruction throughout the pandemic, NCTC has increased the reach of our programs.

Without being confined by the limitations of the space, we’ve been able to serve students from many locations (from SF Bay Area, to Seattle, LA, San Diego and even NYC), lending greater equity and access to our offerings. This summer, we

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had 30 youth students attending our online classes. This fall, we have 48 youth students enrolled in classes, and 28 adults enrolled in workshops (more info on that below).

Enrollment is open now, so these numbers of students served are only growing. Additionally, we’ve offered over a dozen scholarships, both full and partial, to students in need. No student is ever turned away for lack of funds. Due to our growing curriculum, we are also able to employ 5 teaching artists in addition to our Conservatory staff.

- Halloween is the actor’s holiday! We love wearing costumes, telling scary stories, and, well, eating candy!

The premier Saturday Performance Ensembles for grades 3-12 are producing a Halloween Spooktacular on October 31. This online event will feature recorded performances, plus games and a costume contest. It’s time to bring the community together to celebrate this talented group of performers and keep a little magic going for the fall season.

- We’ve also been able to expand our offerings in our new Adult Drama Club.

For the first time in many years, we are now offering theatre enrichment workshops for adults!

Each workshop has a different theme and meets for 50-75 minutes once a week in the evenings. Consider it your theatre book club: a chance to unwind from the day, connect with others, and participate in the arts in a meaningful way. The next session begins the first week of November and enrollment is open now.

Here’s a little sneak peek from our summer adult workshops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEXCRcsQyjA - A brand new programming line-up was developed and the Conservatory diversified the cultural educational opportunities in both our youth classes and adult work-

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shops. For young students grades 3-5, we are hosting a Spanish-language immersion class where students will play acting games to inspire their imaginations and build on the oral tradition of storytelling.

In the Adult Drama Club for ages 18+, Reader’s Theatre will introduce you to amazing Mexican playwrights through readings and discussions of a new play each week. Both courses will be led by NCTC Teaching Artist Francisco Javier Rodriguez (pictured above) - theatre-maker, actor, educator, and Artistic Director of the Mexican American Conservatory Theatre.

- Have you ever wanted to know how the Avenue Q puppets come to life? Long-time NCTC family member Chris Morrell (our Nicky/Trekkie for several years) is leading a workshop on puppetry. Participants will create a signature voice and personality for their puppet and improv short skits. Perfect for letting your inner child out, and a chance to hang out with an NCTC veteran actor. No real puppets required, socks will do! More info here.

Click the images below to learn more about each adult workshop.

Meet Nikki MeĂąez

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Meet Nikki Meñez, NCTC Artist & Activist While many of you may have only met Nikki (left, photo by Andy Strong) in passing at an event at the theatre, she has been an integral part of the fabric of NCTC for the last five years, and of the progressive Bay Area theatre at large. She was a teaching artist with the Conservatory when a part time position became available with YouthAware, our educational theatre program that tours short productions to schools, helping students and teachers navigate topics that might otherwise be difficult to approach in a classroom setting. From her first interview with Ed for YA, a pipeline was established that would eventually lead to Nikki directing on the mainstage. In the meantime, she says, “having my growth as a human being and a young professional facilitated by NCTC, by Barb and Ed guiding me in a way where I was prepared to clearly articulate my visions for the program and create off a structure that I was already familiar,” allowed her to evolve the program into something she could take real ownership of. Indeed, Nikki’s hard work and vision lead to her promotion as the YouthAware Program Director & NCTC’s Casting Associate, alongside Production Manager Stephanie Desnoyers.

All the while, Nikki cut her teeth by freelance directing productions at various theatres in the city, including the indie Awesome Theatre (where she also serves as their Casting Director) and notably, a production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights at Custom Made Theatre. This production solidified and centralized her work’s focus on the connective tissue of

12 relationships and community, a necessary aspect of a show that requires authentically conveying familial, life-long neighborhood closeness among its cast of characters. This process began early in the process, at the callback auditions. Anyone who has ever participated in a callback knows it can be a moment of stress and competition: it’s the time where an actor goes from being considered to being chosen. Nikki wanted to approach this in a way that broke down that high-wire stress.

Instead of a traditional A Chorus Line-style dance combination callback, she instead paired up actors and asked them to create their own short partner dances, shuffling through a randomized playlist of Latinx music to dance to. In doing so, she infused the process with joy, play, and a sense of community reliance & safety. She overheard actors leaving the callback saying that even if they weren’t hired they would be coming to see this show, as it was going to be something special.

Nikki’s path to NCTC’s mainstage has been largely intertwined with the circumstances of the pandemic. Indeed, her first foray onto the mainstage is one that almost nobody outside of the creative team got to see. She Assistant Directed Yilong Liu’s The Book of Mountains & Seas alongside Director Becca Wolf (Casa Valentina, STEVE). This is the play that only got one preview performance before closing due to San Francisco’s shut down of events in city buildings. As a close friend of the playwright, Nikki offered the production a level of understanding and insight not otherwise available.

Though disappointingly short-lived in its run, this experience served as a natural easing into mainstage direction where she worked closely with Ed and playwright Patricia Milton on the development of The Law of Attraction, slated for production in the 2020-21 Season. The staging in the smaller Walker Theater to focus on the intimacy of the characters’ relationships and a previous experience directing Patricia’s work for a short play festival with 3 Girls Theatre made it a natural choice for Nikki to direct. Additionally, having a character with a shared Filipinx background was an added bonus, as having a director with cultural competency in the background of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) characters is instrumental in honoring that culture’s rep-

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resentation. Plus, she says, “it’s just funny. The access point of humor and social justice really resonated with me.”

As a world premiere with NCTC’s New Voices/New Works program, the theatre has the opportunity to shape the development of the play and respond to the conversations and context of the time. In the complex circumstances of the pandemic and of fervent calls for justice and accountability, a play centering around a well-meaning but naive white woman, making her living selling commercialized feminism in the form of self-help books and talks geared towards other well-meaning white women, became fertile - and comic ground for delving into these themes more deeply. Without giving away too much of the plot, the story centers on a big mistake the main character, MJ, makes in her relationship with her partner, Natasha, and how they reckon with that harm, hold MJ to account to recognize the impact and repair the damage done.

Not only have current events focused the themes of the show, they have also changed the format. In order to produce the play in the highest quality and safest manner, NCTC has decided to release it as an audio drama. Of course, this created both new opportunities and new challenges. While Sound Engineer Kalon Thibodeaux (who also engineered our episode podcast In Good Company) can do amazing things in creating an immersive soundscape, this format necessitates being very specific as to how characters describe themselves and convey personal traits. For example, Natasha, around whom the plot’s central conflict revolves, is a biracial person.

Therefore, naming her biracial identification and that she is in an interracial relationship is key to conveying the context of their relationship. “It’s also important to let levity, even on a serious topic, be a part of that experience,” Nikki says.

“It lets you build a participatory connection to these characters. There are 4 characters who have completely different lenses through which they view the world. Everybody is bound to identify with someone in this play, and yet, nobody is safe from a joke. Sometimes when you laugh, you don’t quite know if you’re the type of person being laughed at.

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Sometimes you have to listen a little harder. It opens you up to being even more empathetic towards everyone involved in this story. And, it’s important to acknowledge that you can still be in relation to one another and harm each other, and that’s not something to be afraid of.”

Fostering empathy through art is one of the core values and goals at NCTC, throughout all of our programs. We feel that is needed now more than ever. During this time, we’re also focused on the future of queer & allied theatre, and what we want that to look like. For Nikki, “There are so many important voices out there right now that are spreading their wings and flying and I want to make sure that NCTC is a part of how the landscape is changing. As a young queer person in the arts world, I’m getting to know so many people, especially writers, who are not necessarily finding their voice, but finding a place for their voice in the arts.” As an artist, she also is looking to create theatre that can examine the centering of whiteness, even when BIPOC voices are included. “There are so many untouched points of queer identity that aren’t yet a part of a normalized queer theatre canon, and that is what I’m interested in, particularly in empowering stories of Black and Indigenous queer voices.” As a director, her approach is as much about process as it is product, in “observing how oppressive systems have infiltrated the way we produce, make, and relate to each other through art.” A self-described “pollinator” in Bay Area theatre, she hopes to employ her speciality of creating connective tissue and nurturing relationships to paint a fuller picture of what queer theatre looks like, with NCTC as a leader in a more communicative arts ecosystem.

In all her work, Nikki finds her role as a creative facilitator.

This is evident in her current work with YouthAware, where she has had to adapt this program to the current circumstances much like Law of Attraction. Many of you know Andrew Nance, longtime NCTC family member, former Conservatory Director, actor, and now Board Member. In 2014 he founded a nonprofit called Mindful Arts SF, with a mission: “To provide volunteer-facilitated mindfulness instruction to

15 SFUSD students through a partnership with the San Francisco Education Fund.” His teaching curriculum, having reached over 2,000 SF elementary aged students, will now be given an even wider reach through the YouthAware program.

Andrew’s first educational mindfulness book for children, Puppy Mind, was set to be adapted into a new touring play for grades K-3 this year. However, with Covid-19, in-school instruction and large group performances were unable to go forward. And yet, there was immediate recognition that attending to the emotional health of children and giving them the tools to sit, breathe deeply, and recognize their feelings was more important than ever. Acting as both a producer and director in this process, Nikki has worked alongside Andrew, Ed, and the NCTC production team to adapt this book into a 5-episode web series that will air through SFUSD’s SF Loves Learning morning show on KTVU and will be archived on the SFUSD Youtube Channel. Teachers will be making these episodes a part of their standardized provided curriculum to supplement their limited resources and make mindfulness a day-to-day school experience for young ones, enhancing teacher capacity and creating more resilient young students who learn to honor their emotional truths. As of the release of this newsletter, the Puppy Mind web series is just now being filmed on a socially distanced set in the Walker Theatre. If you or anyone you know have young children, we highly recommend taking advantage of this free educational opportunity by subscribing to the SFUSD Youtube Channel, Puppy Mind episodes will be posted in late Fall.

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