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That said, the division of duties between the leaders at this theatre, where there is no managing director, is explicit: Corporandy heads up strategic planning, finance, contracts and HR; Burkett directs marketing and production; Winkler oversees development and board relations; and Morisseau manages what could be called external affairs. (Morisseau, a Black woman, volunteered herself for the job to make her role within the artistic leadership of the company more visible and the artistic leadership of the theatre more representative of the city of Detroit.) At the same time, the value of collaboration permeates all of their planning.

“Even though I’m the money person, there are things where I want Winkler’s opinion because she’s looking at it from this direction,” Corporandy said. “I want Courtney’s opinion because she’s looking at it from this direction.

Corporandy noted that, after working for a long time herself on the season eight budget, she felt it was important to have the co-artistic directors weigh in as well.

“They think of things that I don’t,” she said. “And that’s one of the ways the collaboration is at its strongest – it kind of takes the pressure off of having to be perfect at everything.”

Other benefits of working this way, Corporandy said, include getting the opportunity to tap each other’s strengths.

“There are times where I’m like, I don’t know a lot about that, but Courtney [does] – I can ask her,” Corporandy said. “There are also times where I’m like, I’m not great with that person or I’m having a bad day or I’m over my limit, or Sarah’s temperament is better for that, or Dominique’s temperament is better for that conversation. And so now, instead of being one person having to be able to do it all and handle every personality and have all the answers, there are four of us.”

Though their board required detailed job descriptions and an organizational chart to put their full faith in such a collaborative model, Corporandy describes the theatre’s management ethos as: “Be nimble and expect to have to solve problems.”

“In the way that we work, we are nimble and responsive to change,” she said. “And you know, COVID taught us that, too. How many business plans did we all make, how many budgets did everyone make over and over and over again? How many scenarios? So, I don’t ever want to be so tied down in a structure that we can’t pivot, because I think that’s our strength. I don’t have all the answers, but that’s how we work in general is that it’s okay to pivot, to change.”

She also said artistic leaders working in shared leadership need to balance their egos with the needs of the moment.

“You have to let go of the ego when you’re sharing that much,” she said. “There are times when I’m reading the room and [it’s clear] this room doesn’t need another artistic opinion from me. Even though I’m a producing artistic director, I’m not going to give it ... So, there are some times we have to make choices about that. When do I get

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Austin’s Rude Mechs became an institution in 1998, years after this group of likeminded artists began working together, so when it came to defining the organization’s structure, it made sense to replicate their collaborative rehearsal room practice in the administrative structure of the company, co-founder Shawn Sides (she/her) said.

While the division of duties between the five co-producing artistic directors –Madge Darlington (she/her), Thomas Graves (he/him), Lana Lesley (she/her), Kirk Lynn (he/him) and Sides – is less explicit than at Detroit Public Theatre, co-founders Lynn and Sides echoed Corporandy’s sentiment on the challenge of having to remove their egos from the decision-making process.

“I think we have lots of discipline, meaning it’s very fluid. I think we trust ourselves to be quiet when we don’t have either a strong opinion or it’s not our area of expertise,” said Lynn.

Sides said their process “kind of evolved over time, more than anything else as a time-saving device, because earlier meetings could be completely interminable. You have an opinion to say about, like the font –oh my Lord, how many long conversations do we have about font?”

Lynn agreed, saying, “Different ones of us like having say about different things. I never particularly care about the marketing and design ’cause I’m not a very visual person. And then, when something really matters to you, you speak. It’s a way that you can have a say about the things that matter to you, but also feel that other people are watching out for the parts that are less your strength.”

The producing artistic leaders of Artists at Play, a Los Angeles producing collective focused on exploring Asian American experience that was founded in 2011 under shared leadership, agreed that co-artistic leaders have to know their own strengths and weaknesses and respect one another’s professional expertise.

Although a three-person team consisting of Julia Cho (she/her), Stefanie Lau (she/her) and Marie-Reine Velez (she/ her) shares fiduciary responsibility for the company, Cho tends to run their crowdfunding campaigns, while Lau shepherds the creation of the budget. In terms of shared values, an annual retreat brings the collective together “to really check in with each other and revisit our lives, our work, our mission, our vision,” Cho said.

Because they aim to serve a diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander community, these producing artistic leaders value having multiple voices at the table.

“We need to make sure we’re not just focusing on the East Asian communities,” Cho said. “We’re trying to expand what Asian American theatre means to us, to our audiences, and to be as diverse and inclusive as possible with what we choose to present. Having all those different mindsets and perspectives in the room can only lead to more innovative and exciting conversations, and it opens you up to more possibilities and forces you to confront your own biases or close-mindedness. And I think that’s all for the better – nothing but good can come from being challenged and listening and learning.”

Shared leadership: pros & cons

A significant challenge shared by many of the leaders engaged in shared leadership is that everything does take more time. So, if you are thinking of adopting such a structure, plan accordingly. Not only do the co-producing artistic directors of the Rude Mechs go through the budget together line by line, but according to Lynn, “When things are working really well, when we write a grant, everybody has touched the grant, and it deepens through the questioning and having five brains who are passionate look at it from different points of view.” One need not have written many grants to imagine how long that takes.

CTG’s Allbaugh echoed that time is a challenge, but added that, ultimately, it is also a benefit: “When you really are being thoughtful and generous and working in a new way, things do take longer. It does take longer when you have five artistic people making a decision. So, we’re constantly trying to find the balance between deadlines and making sure we really investigated and have been thorough about our decision making.”

For example, Allbaugh said, “One of the things that we are really trying to break down across the institution is just going to the same people we’ve always gone to because it’s easy. And we go, oh, that guy takes our photos, and this person is our printer. Thinking about who our vendors are, that takes more time.”

She recommends “getting out ahead of those decisions so that you can thoughtfully think about other people to bring to the table that can do the job just as well or better.”

At Virginia Repertory, the need for more time for planning and decision-making has also been both a challenge and a boon.

“Issues get considered more deeply, more carefully, which takes more time,” Norris said. “You just have to remind yourself, this is going to take longer, a season selection process is going to take longer if you are trying to bat about philosophical questions about ‘What kind of a theatre do you want to be? What do you want your theatre to stand for in the community?’ Those conversations are longer now, and it’s good for the results.”

All of those who spoke to Southern Theatre find the benefits of shared leadership, such as more imaginative programming and more innovative collective problem-solving, far outweigh the challenges. Some leaders even experience increased work/life balance.

“Everybody’s life goes through these different phases and different moments and different biologies and dependencies, and different people can be leaders at different times,” said Lynn of Rude Mechs. “It’s like, this is really Lana and Shawn’s company for a while because they had this passion, and now it really feels like it’s Thomas and Madge’s company for a while – not in any big way that anybody else might notice, but just the power and the energy and the passion can sort of rotate. We sometimes talk about the metaphor of a cycling team, where different people can be the leaders and everybody else can draft for a while.”

Whether creating a theatre from the ground up, dealing with COVID-related challenges, meeting the demands of WSYWAT, or planning a leadership succession, theatre leaders may want to explore the shared leadership model as a way to move toward decision making that is more inclusive, diverse and innovative. n

Holly L. Derr is the artistic director and head of graduate directing at the University of Memphis. The founding artistic director of SKT, Inc., she has directed for numerous theatres. Her writing credits include The Atlantic, HowlRound, Ms. Magazine, Slate and Bitch.