Program notes: FRANKENSTEIN: A GHOST STORY

KANSAS CITY REPERTORY THEATRE, MARCH 2020

When I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, what surprised me most was that it starts not with Victor Frankenstein, but with letters from Robert Walton to his sister, describing his exploration to the Arctic, his ship stuck in ice, and his encounter with Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein, on the verge of death, tells the tale that we think of as the book.

Walton’s story wraps around the story of Victor, and Victor’s story wraps around the story of the creature, and as I completed the book, I wondered “who is the protagonist?” Is it the creature who tells us of his birth and life? Is it Victor, who carries out the creation of this monster and yet fails in rearing it? Or, is it Walton, who hears this tale and changes the course of his own life? 

One of the things I love about Kyle Hatley’s theatrical work is that he is in pursuit of a single question: why do we need stories? Storytelling makes us human by creating connection, understanding, inspiration, surprise, comfort, and helps us make sense of our lives in both intellectual and emotional ways.

As a theatre creator I often say, if every play you do doesn’t change you somehow, you’re doing it wrong. It isn’t simply the receiver of a story who feels that impact and connection. The teller of the story needs it too—the story meets us, we engage with it, and we are irrevocably changed.

This adaptation of Frankenstein puts the storyteller center stage, a storyteller who like Walton finds himself metaphorically stuck in ice. Unlike Walton, who is hearing this story for the first time, our storyteller is telling the story for the last time. He may know the tale well, but through telling it he makes discoveries and connections that release him to once again captain his ship and choose where to navigate next.

In this way, Hatley has written a play that is a love letter to interpretive artists—we may not always generate the stories we enact, but we bring our personal truth to them, creating something evocative and singular in our productions that have a profound effect on our very being. As an interpretative artist, I’m honored to share this glimpse of what that feels like with all of you.

Program Notes: A DOLL'S HOUSE PART 2

JUNGLE THEATRE, JANUARY 2020

Torvald: Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.

Nora. I don't believe that anymore. I believe that before all else I am a thinking human being, just like you. Or, that I must try to become one.

- Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House

In the final scene of A Doll’s House, Nora wakes up to the fallacy not only of her marriage, but of the institution in general. Knowing she can no longer live a lie and play house with her husband and children, she needs to put herself first, and leaves her home to find out who she truly is.

In reading A Doll’s House multiple times over the years and seeing it staged in various versions, I always found myself incredibly frustrated with Nora, who, for the first two acts of the play, tries to weasel herself out of a pack of lies while continuing to play her role of wife with an obnoxious amount of ditzy flair. But as I worked on adapting and directing Ibsen’s play last year, I came to believe three things: 1) that what I considered obnoxious was simply Nora being good at her “job” as wife, 2) it is the patriarchal system that forces women to be manipulative, and 3) that Nora is the bravest heroine of dramatic literature. She leaves everything she knows behind the moment she realizes the lack of honesty in how she’s been living, without knowing where she will go or what she will do. In 1879, this was no small thing—as a woman her options were few, and her opportunities were slim. Would I have the courage to do the same, if I was in her position?

I’ll admit, I’ve always assumed that a hard road was ahead for Nora. Because of this, I was taken aback when I first encountered Lucas Hnath’s play. How could she have done so well? And then I realized that I didn’t give her enough credit. My own personal bias that made me frustrated with Nora, also made me discredit her, even though in the first play she proves herself to be clever with people, good with money, and shrewd in business.

But here, in A Doll’s House Part 2, circumstances have brought her back knocking on the door that she famously walked out of, creating what was known as the “door slam heard around the world.” She is now an independent woman who has become a thinking human being, and yet she is still seeking her freedom from the patriarchal system and she needs to learn exactly what that means.

Nora again, surprises and impresses me with her daring, her vision, her boldness.

And she still frustrates me.

But who am I to expect perfection from our visionaries?

Program Notes: A SMALL FIRE

PHILADELPHIA THEATRE COMPANY, OCTOBER 2019

Last year, a small fire began from a gunshot at a shooting range just a couple of miles from my childhood home the Colorado mountains. This small fire ignited a larger fire, which became the largest in the valley’s recent history. It blazed for months, reaching less than a quarter mile from my parents. The fire destroyed close to 13,000 acres, a few homes, and fighting it cost over 17 million dollars.

Hundreds of firefighters, both professional and volunteer, kept that massive fire at bay and from destroying even more homes and forest. Emergency services came from all edges of the country to help, while the community came together to support those who had to evacuate their homes with food, shelter, and necessities. While the fire blazed on, the people of the neighboring towns came out to support the first responders with hot meals and words of thanks and encouragement. This community was devastated by the fire, but also found resilience in their coming together. When I go home to visit, the fire comes up in conversation regularly, it’s clearly changed people—they are more appreciative of the beautiful forest, their community, and firefighters—they know how quickly it could all be lost.

Small fires happen every day.
Sometimes they are extinguished.
Sometimes they burn themselves out.
Sometimes they spread.
Sometimes, they grow and we can’t fight them alone.

These are the critical moments of our lives.

When a fire has spread, either literally or metaphorically, those who love us most grab their hoses and fight it with us. Or if they can’t fight it with us, they stand by our sides and support us while we fight. A large fire like that one doesn’t just happen to one person, it happens to a community. And our personal fires effect not only us but our family and friends. The irony of life, I’ve found, is that adversity often provides opportunities to grow both personally, and closer to people we love.

Years from now, I know that my friends and family will still be talking about the fire—where they were, what role they took, the new friendships that were forged, who slept in who’s house—it’s something that they’ve been through together now. In a way, I have too, from afar, because I love all of them and I love my hometown. I was on the phone with them for daily updates, I reached out to people I hadn’t spoken to for years to make sure they were okay, I felt more connected with the community than I had in the 20-something years since I moved away.

When your parents’ house is close to being consumed in a massive, raging fire, it’s frightening, that is undeniable. I would never claim the fire was good. Forest fires are devastating forces, destroying wildlife, people, and communities. But it also remains true that to some extent, forest fires are natural, and that wildlife requires a certain amount of burning down for regrowth.

The mountainside above and around the town is charred. The trees are blackened skeletons of what they once were. I look forward to seeing nature restore itself, to study where and how the growth happens, and to witness the budding small green leaves that will peek out from the ash, and become the new trees that spring up to replace the old.

Program Notes: FRIDA...A SELF PORTRAIT

Women disappear. We have to search hard to find women in our history books, the literary canon, classical music, art history and the history of drama, where women are footnotes, if there at all. Their work was “amateur” (because they weren’t allowed to be professional) and was neither respected nor documented. And therefore, they disappear.

Frida Kahlo, obfuscated by her “genius” husband for most of her life, was too feisty to allow herself to disappear. She wasn’t a “nice” woman or a “good girl.” She made herself seen. She forced herself to look at herself. She studied and painted and saw herself “as she truly is.” Frida reached a level of realness with herself, both inside and out that few women had documented before her. She showed the world her truth, her vulnerability and her humanity. That was a revolutionary act.

We are drawn to self-portraits, memoirs and other forms of autobiography because they make us feel seen and not so alone. This becomes even more important when history tries to make some of us disappear: Women, people of color, people with disabilities, queer people and trans people across the world look at Frida’s self-portraits and see themselves because they recognize the pain she articulates so well in her work. Frida has given the world a gift by being so authentically herself. She is all of us, and we can see that we exist because she existed. She gives us permission to value ourselves, our lives, our pain, our thoughts and our feelings just as she did.

Frida…A Self Portrait is a self-portrait of both the historical figure and performer Vanessa Severo. An actor expresses themselves by interpreting others. As an actor, what better way to create a self-portrait than to perform someone else? This self-portrait – which is as beautiful and honest as Frida was –  is created with the paints of an actor’s toolbox: language, characters, accents, movement, puppetry and creative play. In this highly theatrical world on stage, we witness a conversation Vanessa has been having with Frida for years. As the piece unfolds, there are moments when the lines become blurred between the actor and the character. What we are left with is pure Frida and pure Vanessa, both searching to be seen and understood, reaching a hand out to all the other “strange” people in the world through their honest expression of self. Not disappearing…and urging us not to disappear.

Howlround: Following the Knowing

Sarah Rasmussen and I had a great conversation about arts leadership, and Howlround published it in 2 parts!

Part 1: Following the Knowing
”In a recent conversation I had about those moments of intuition, I decided to rename it “knowing.” When I know something, I know something. It’s not intuition. It’s not something magical. I have to trust that so I can convince everyone else. And, if I end up being wrong, then that’s the challenge of leadership.”

Part 2: Taking Leaps in Leadership
”The other thing I learned was that what the community thinks they are and what they say about themselves is not necessarily what they are. Maybe in their own way they do support the values they avow. But there are deeper hidden things and agendas. And there’s history. A community doesn’t necessarily have anything they can measure itself next to. Whereas us coming in from the outside, we do. We can go, ‘You say that you really want this. But I think actually it’s this thing.’”

Talkback Backtalk in American Theater Magazine

WaterTower Theatre associate artistic director Kelsey Leigh Ervi talks with LGBTQ-identified youth at a talkback after “Hit the Wall.” (Photo by Kayla Freeman)

WaterTower Theatre associate artistic director Kelsey Leigh Ervi talks with LGBTQ-identified youth at a talkback after “Hit the Wall.” (Photo by Kayla Freeman)

WATERTOWER THEATRE, Addison, Texas

Joanie Schultz became artistic director of WaterTower Theatre in Texas after a long stint as a freelance director in Chicago, including work at Victory Gardens. After 18 months on the job, she feels that the talkbacks she’s instituted are starting to pay off for artists and audiences alike.

The first project she undertook, Ike Holter’s Stonewall-era play Hit the Wall, replaced a previously announced production of Sunday in the Park with George. “We did as much engagement with the LGBTQ community as we possibly could,” Schultz emphasizes. “That was our introduction to community engagement, and discovering ways we could help our plays intersect with all the different communities around us and the things going on in the world.”

The production provided the occasion for panel discussions with “people who could speak about the status of [LGBTQ rights] in that moment, and what was going on in Texas in that struggle. Turns out there was a lot in our state government to be concerned about—a bathroom bill, all kinds of repressive stuff like that coming up.”

Plays like Hit the Wall, with a strong social-justice or timely angle, tend to be an easier starting point for creating parallel programming, Schultz reasons. For Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which ran last October, she admits, “It was a little harder. We ended up with a scholar who could talk about rebellious women in literature, and we also had a modern-day matchmaker come in. I got to interview her, and it turned out to be really fascinating.”

Schultz is also aware that asking people with close emotional connections to a story to appear onstage can be tricky. For Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue, which ran in winter 2018, “It was hard to get veterans who wanted to talk about their war experiences. We did end up hearing from one panel of veterans.”

Talkbacks, for many reasons, aren’t always sweetness and light. Schultz recalls one from her time at Victory Gardens during the run of Gardley’s An Issue of Blood, which she calls “a really intense play about black-white relations. A guy in the post-show, an older white man, stood up and started saying all this stuff about how racism doesn’t exist, and white men were getting ostracized—it was one of those moments I felt I didn’t know how to handle. There was a Ph.D student, an African American man, in the audience, and he ended up asking the other guy the right questions. I felt guilty that he was the one to salvage that situation.”

Still, Schultz thinks there is value even in such tense moments. “What we’re asking for is discourse. And we’re not super-good as a society at having discourse and disagreeing with each other. I really want our theatres to be a safe place for dialogue. I think the disagreements can be a kind of training gym, where maybe we can learn to disagree with each other better for the rest of our lives.”

Announcement of Intersections Community Engagement Program at WaterTower

In 2017, we launched a community engagement program at WaterTower Theater.

“Intersections has two primary objectives,” said artistic director Joanie Schultz in a statement. “The first is focused on providing all of our audience members a deeper look into the artistic work on our stages, offering more context while making our work even more relevant in the lives of our audience. The second is cultivating authentic artistic exchanges across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, with the belief that the themes and human stories we put on our stages will resonate throughout the community.”

The program will include engagement initiatives with community groups in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, artistic collaborations, accessible workshops, interactive lobby displays, post-show talkbacks, collaborations with local organizations and individual artists, production play guides (both online and in print), play readings, and more.

The Intersections programming for Ike Holter’s Hit the Wall (July 28-Aug. 20), about the Stonewall Riots in New York City, will include conversations with LGBTQ youth organizations, a discussion with a queer historian, and performances by local bands.

Know a theater interview in American Theater Magazine

WaterTower Theater: Know a Theater

“What does theatre—not just your theatre, but the American or world theatre—look like in, say, 20 years?

I think the most amazing thing about theatre is that it is essentially primitive and innovative at the same time. The most human art form (humans watching other humans tell stories) is one that expands and changes in form somewhat, but it’s always the most elementally theatrical productions that astound and delight audiences, even with all of the new technology in the world. I believe that theatre is an essential tool in helping us navigate the globalized world by introducing us to the stories of others in the safe environment of the theatre. I think that won’t change, and actually that the theatres of each region will become more and more important in the next 20 years, as people will need places to be in contact with humanity.”

An Artistic Director Prepares: Where I'm From

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I’ve named this column An Artistic Director Prepares. The title is a nod to two books that have shaped who I am: the seminal acting text by Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, and a book by one of the leading directors and thinkers in the American Theatre today, Anne Bogart, A Director Prepares. I don’t presume to put myself on the level of these two great thinkers of the modern theatre, but like those books, my writing this column is in the spirit of investigating one’s artistic process. An Actor Prepares is a fictional book about a student learning to act from a great teacher; seen through the young actor’s eyes, we experience with him what he is learning as he learns it. A Director Prepares is a series of essays, each investigating a different kind of challenge one approaches in art making. I expect that this column will be a little of both: my learning new things and reflecting as I experience them, and the my thoughts on the kind of challenges I find myself facing and reflecting on how to creatively use these challenges. I know as little about how this column will unfold as I know about how my new position will unfold.

So what’s the new position? I’ve recently been appointed Artistic Director of WaterTower Theatre in Addison. Over the next few months, I’m moving from my long-time home in Chicago to lead this organization, a life-change that is as exciting as it is terrifying. After years of freelance directing and teaching, a few years ago I realized that what I really wanted was an artistic home. Somewhere that I could plant roots and develop something bigger than one play. I sought out the mentorship of Chay Yew, Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater, and together we applied for the Leadership U One-on-One Fellowship through TCG (the national theatre organization). After a long process I was, indeed, awarded the fellowship and worked closely with Chay for close to two years as a member of the artistic staff. The training I received through TCG and at Victory Gardens was life-changing. Not only did I learn hands-on theatre management skills, I learned a multitude about myself and what kind of leader I am/want to be. And here I am, less than a year after the fellowship ended, packing my boxes and hitting the road for a new adventure in DFW.

That’s about all I’ll say for now about who I am. I’d like to start with a little about where I’m from:

The short answer: Chicago. I’ve lived in Chicago since 1996, when I moved there to attend Columbia College. I thought, as many young people do, that I was headed for Broadway. What I had no way of knowing at 18-years-old when I arrived from Colorado was that I was going to find a community and home in a place that has a massive amount of theatre (250-300 theatres depending on who you ask), and a community of theatre people with who really care about the work and each other.

When people talk about “Chicago theatre” there’s a vague sense of what that means. I’m going to dare to try to define it here—knowing that I’m just one artist, and that other Chicagoians might disagree with how I break this down. However, my thesis is that three core values permeate the Chicago theater scene. You can see evidence of these values at every theatre in Chicago, no matter the play or genre or size or equity or non-equity:

1.     Ensemble: this could also be called “collaboration”, but the concept of the ensemble is so deeply tied to Chicago that I stuck with that word. Many of our theatre companies are “ensemble theatres”, built by actors who work together on show after show. But ensemble is also a philosophy that every person’s point of view and position is as important as the other. That we should share ideas, fervently disagree, and find creative solutions together. We value the ideas that happen in a room with other people over the individual genius, just as we value the ensemble over the star. The most successful plays in Chicago are all about the spark of seeing amazing people work together to create an electric show.

2.     Honesty: This includes creating productions that the artists are truly speaking through, and also being honest with each other and ourselves about the work. We hold the bar for excellence high in Chicago. We applaud each other’s efforts, respect each other’s work, and cheer on each other’s successes; but we also know the importance of having a critical eye and expecting more. We don’t settle. We don’t pat ourselves on the back easily. We raise the bar for each other by continuing to work hard on our own crafts individually and bringing a lot to the table each time we do a show. We won’t lie to each other about the work, but will be kindly truthful to each other and ourselves about what worked and what didn’t work. (Hopefully after the show closes.)

3.     Commitment: our productions tend towards is a level of commitment that is fearless, and this is what makes Chicago theatre so fierce. In the best realism, actors become their characters and live truthfully within them, and in the best non-realism the actors are playing the actions with focus and intention that makes you never question what is happening. And this is what, in one artist’s opinion, truly is the “brand” of Chicago theatre—unflinching commitment onstage. And this is true offstage as well. The artists I have worked with in Chicago are some of the most committed I know. Whether or not it pays their bills, they are at rehearsal and meetings prepared and ready to work hard. They’re at each other’s plays ready to be attentive audience members. They’re at parties, events, fundraisers. The theatre is a way of life. It’s not a job, or a hobby, it’s something that one commits themselves to wholeheartedly. We all do in the theatre, but I think that the self-sacrifice for the sake of theatre is especially intense in Chicago. For better or worse, this is a core value of our community. We honor it in each other and feel pride when we fulfill it ourselves.

These three values are etched in my theatrical DNA from my 20 years as a Chicago theatre artist. I carry them with me to every city I work in, every process I participate in, they are part of who I am, how I work, and what I value. I’m grateful for them. And even when I leave Chicago, I know I have Chicago with me, not just because of the people I keep in touch with, but because of the way I live my life and do my work. I’m looking forward to sharing that with my new community in DFW.

I’m looking forward to learning a new community and the values here, both artistic and otherwise. There’s so much I know I’ll be learning and exploring, especially in this first year, as I pack up my bags and move myself to Dallas. I expect that there will be many exciting discoveries along the way and I will be writing about them every month in this column. Selfishly, I expect this will be a helpful touchstone to reflect on what I’ve encountered that month in my new positon, new city, and new life; but I also hope that it sparks thoughts and conversation. I look forward to your thoughts and comments as I unpack my experience as the new Artistic Director of WaterTower Theatre.

Program Notes: SEX WITH STRANGERS

CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE, November 2016

“How do I make myself hard enough to withstand all the bad, but stay soft enough to be the writer I want to be?” –Olivia, Sex with Strangers

As a director, I put my most intimate thoughts, feelings, and expressions as a human into my theatrical work. I spend hours of mental space researching, analyzing, dreaming, collaborating, rehearsing, teching, and fine-tuning every play I direct, sometimes more than a year in the making. And then there it is, after opening, the long-anticipated review. The printed response. The permanent proof of this ephemeral piece of art that I have spearheaded.

This makes me feel things. Sometimes really negative things, sometimes positive things, but the problem remains that these critics make me feel things. Things about myself, my work, my self-worth, things that I wish I was immune to and didn’t feel. It’s a predicament that I can’t seem to fix. I’ve been through many phases with the issue, and tried different solutions. Nothing has fully unhooked me from the problem, it’s ongoing. No end in sight.

But, I’ve realized recently that it’s a continuous process, not a problem for me to solve. I must stay the vulnerable, authentic artist I want to be, and because of that I must learn to be okay with feeling things.

Brené Brown explains beautifully in her incredible book Daring Greatly, “we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we’ve confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities. If we want to reclaim the essential emotional part of our lives and reignite our passion and purpose, we have to learn how to own and engage with our vulnerability and how to feel the emotions that come with it.”

I’m working on it.

Spotlight On TCG Blog Post

In 2016 I wrote about my vision for the American theatre here on the TCG blog!

Here’s the text:

Spotlight On: Joanie Schultz

My Utopian American Theatre Dream

For the 26th National Conference in Washington DC, TCG is highlighting the current recipients of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships and the Leadership U[niversity] One-on-One Program, the Rising Leaders of Color, and the four finalists for the Alan Schneider Director Award. These programs are unique to the field, and provide critical support and mentorship for the future leaders of our art form. In honor of our longstanding commitment to professional development across the field, we are excited to continue to host the Spotlight On Series throughout the spring leading up to the conference.

TCG: When was the moment that you decided to take on a leadership role in the field?

Joanie Schultz: I found myself pursuing a life in the theater as a young adult because it was in the theater that I found a community where I belonged. For various reasons, as a young person, I always felt like an outsider. Even among friends or family I always felt like the odd man out, the person who secretly knew she didn’t fit in. Somehow, though, when I stumbled into the theater, I always felt accepted and supported. It was a place where I could express myself, celebrate my own contradictions, and find peace with my own flawed human-ness. It was life-saving.

And much like the late age wherein I had to finally accept there was no Santa Claus (which I won’t admit here), I was late to the party in learning that the professional theater community was not that same magic place that I found in my high school drama room. And that, in fact, my high school drama room was not the magic place for others that it had been for me. See, I had this utopian idea that in the theater, the corrupt rules of the rest of the world wouldn’t apply. The theater, to me, was clearly a better place than the rest of the world. It was a place where there wouldn’t be issues of greed, favoritism, or prejudice. It was a place where it wouldn’t matter where I came from, what my gender was, or that I had no money to back up my theatrical dreams. The only thing that would count was my artistic vision.

And much like the person I was as a child who nodded my head and agreed that Santa wasn’t real but still secretly wrote letters and believed in him in my heart, when I discovered that the American theater was not the perfect society I had thought it to be, when that dream was crushed and I realized that we not only reflect the world we live in, but are sometimes behind the curve in our notions towards ethics and diversity, equity, and inclusion—even then, even now, I still have this secret belief inside of me of the that at it’s core, the theater can do better. And that belief has quietly spoken to me for years and pushed me towards asserting myself as a leader.

TCG: As an arts leader, what is your vision for the future of the theatre field, and what is your role in moving us towards the future that you envision?

JS: I believe that the theater should help us dream of the America that we would like to see and that can be. There is hope and optimism inherent in the creation of art, but in particular I think that creating theater—a medium in which we create a world onstage and peer into it as it happens— is utopian in its promise. Theater artists possess the tools of innovation; we teach professionals in other fields how to collaborate, improvise, problem solve, and think creatively. But we are often terribly antiquated and fearful in the ways we structure and run our own companies. I believe that we can, and that it is our responsibility to try to be models in the way we create our work and govern ourselves, for the rest of the world. As a leader in the American theater, I want to fulfill that utopian American dream. Not the adulterated one filled with greed, pride, and egoism that oppresses and privileges as it does, but the one that inspires us through acceptance and equality.

TCG: What was a moment in your career as an arts leader where you felt connected to a larger community, locally, regionally, nationally or internationally?

JS: I’ve spent many years as a director making theater in rooms that I can only hope create and manifest that ethos which I believe to be so important. I try to be collaborative, straight forward, trustworthy, respectful, and sensitive. I try to be intuitive and articulate, and to lead with an open heart and a clear vision. I try to bring out the best in my collaborators and listen to the information they each bring to the project. I don’t mean to say that my rooms are utopian or perfect, but the attempt to make them so is important to me. I think that the process is as important as the product, when it comes to making theatre. And I want this to be true on all levels of theater production.

It’s been many years in the making, but I’m finally at the next level of theater leadership. I’ve spent years in the field as a director, administrator, and producer thinking about what I would like to do when I finally take the reigns. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to take the time on Leadership U to remind myself of the values that brought me to this point in my life and career. This fellowship not only gave me the opportunity to gain vital skills and training, it also led me to look within, and focus on what is truly important, which for me has been and will always be about creating a welcoming and inclusive community. Expanding my work to reach staff, board, audience, and the greater community is a challenge that I am energized to take on. I am armed with my ideals in my pocket, and I know that there will be many failures and shortcomings that will keep me from this perfect vision, but I also know that striving for the impossible is the most important thing we do in the theater.

“You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?”
–George Bernard Shaw