WHY STUDY THEATRE AT SEWANEE?

LEFT: Increased innovation was the goal of Nataki Garrett, artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in moving to shared leadership with the appointment of three associate artistic directors: Scarlett Kim (top), Evren Odcikin (middle) and Mei Ann Teo (bottom).

ABOVE: Carolina Vargas portrays Guiderius in a scene from The Cymbeline Project, a 10-episode digital production conceived by Garrett and created by Kim, which interweaves theatrical performance and digitally rendered visual layers to create an experience that is part theatre, part film. Episodes were available for streaming or on demand in November and December 2022.

film and virtual reality experiences.

As an example, Kim pointed to an artist who came to direct a play, but also made two short films and did two VR experiments.

“Nataki’s vision for OSF is a radically expansive artistic home where an artist can come and rehearse different versions of themselves and their practices,” Kim said.

The idea is to open the door for artists to express their creativity as it evolves.

“As a shared artistic leadership team, we are charged with actualizing OSF as a ‘container for the future,’ per Nataki’s call to action,” Kim said. “OSF is a ‘container for the future’ that is ever-evolving, that is always iterating to respond to the needs and the ambition and the intuition of the artists in the moment. And that will always change as the current of the world changes.”

The change is so sweeping as to include the physical building in which they work. No longer a row of separate rooms, OSF’s offices have been transformed to an open-concept workspace.

“I think that that is actually a beautiful metaphor for how this is all starting to function,” said Teo.

A focus on centering the most marginalized voices led to a 2023 season that Odcikin called “very Black identity forward. It’s very immigrant forward. It’s very queer forward. Our first four directors are Black in the season, and we didn’t try to do any of those things. I did not realize that until after we were done with the season planning and looked at it.”

Odcikin noted that the selection of Black directors was not a goal that was set for the season or a “box” they were trying to check. Rather, he said, it’s what happened as a result of deep discussions about identity and artistry.

“[It] turns out if you put these people in a room and have that kind of conversation, a lot of Black directors end up in the repertory season,” Odcikin said. “You don’t have to watch out for those things that other theatres do to not mistakenly end up with an all-white season.”

Teo cautions against anyone attempting to exactly replicate what they’ve built at OSF, arguing that different theatres should have different management structures.

“I don’t believe in the replication of it, because all structures are broken in some way,” Teo said. “The nonprofit structure is broken, but also has power in making potent and necessary cultural production possible. A structure that works has to be iterative and responsive to the moment at hand. And Nataki’s vision requires this structure. It actually requires it. So, it’s like making art – we’re finding the form that fits the content.”

Theatres that were founded with shared leadership

While transitioning to more shared leadership may be a trend in the industry, perhaps the leaders most suited to give advice on how to share artistic power are those who founded their companies with that principle in mind, such as Detroit Public Theatre, the Austin-based collective the Rude Mechs, and Los Angeles’ Artists at Play.

When Sarah Clare Corporandy (she/ her), Courtney Burkett (she/her), and Sarah Winkler (she/her) co-founded Detroit Public Theatre in 2015, playwright and actor Dominique Morisseau (she/her) was on the advisory board. From there, she joined the board, and then in 2020 she joined the staff as executive artistic director, forming a four-person leadership team with the three producing artistic directors. Rather than using a rotating model, the four leaders at Detroit Public Theatre share in all decision making.

“We all work together, and we lean on each other’s strengths and support each other’s weaknesses,” Corporandy said.