The Leadership Merry-Go-Round

By Al Heartley

How has the leadership at your institution changed in the last four years? 

The COVID-19 pandemic upended many of our major institutions and life at large. There have been think pieces galore trying to articulate a larger thesis about what was happening in the American theater as audiences have shifted, changed, and clearly not come back with the same velocity as say travel or hospitality (two industries that are still recovering from the pandemic). Everyone wants to go to the Maldives, sip cocktails, and sleep in the sea. Why are people not coming back to the theater? 

What has not been talked about or studied as closely is the change in the leadership of theaters and arts organizations across the country. These changes were acute during the pandemic years, a time when people decided to leave their jobs, retire, or leave the industry. The loss of institutional knowledge, skills, and experience was vast. Just look at your senior or executive leaders over the last several years - if you want to see the starkness of these changes, consider who the longest-tenured employee is at your organization.  

Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. "Many of the challenges facing arts organizations today—such as mixed audience willingness to return, rising production costs, and difficulties aligning diversity and inclusion values with audience and artist expectations—can be traced back to leadership transitions over the last 15 years, particularly within America’s resident theater companies." 

There are approximately 75 major theaters that operate under a collective bargaining agreement called the League of Resident Theaters (did you also think the “R” stood for “regional”? I did for a while). These represent some of the larger institutions in our field (though not always) that can be traced to the resident theater movement Margo Jones, Founder of Theater ‘47, articulated in the late 1940s. In most cities, LORT organizations are the largest employers of those who want to make a living in theater

A few years ago, the national field drew attention to the changing of the guard of the American Theater, particularly by young BIPOC leaders. Folks like Stephanie Ybarra, Jacob Padron, and Hana Sharif were each leading one of these legacy, predominantly white, regional theaters. It was lauded as a moment of “doors swinging open” as was in the New York Times title. 

The striking quote in that article, a canary in the coal mine, was from Maria Goyanes, Artistic Director of Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, who was taking over from its founder Shalwitz.

“White men still have a big piece of the pie, so whatever you do, please do not intimate that suddenly there’s such a sea change that women or people of color have the bigger piece,” Ms. Goyanes said. “It is just not true.”

The workforce in theater in 2024 is an eerily similar picture to what these new artistic directors entered into almost 10 years ago. They came in at a time when many LORT managers began to retire. This was a strategic moment for the field and many theaters missed the boat. 

How? Please, gather around the merry-go-round. 

I first noticed something when Kevin Moore, Managing Director of Theater Communications Group, was hired as the Managing Director of Actors Theater of Louisville. That was followed by Tim Shields, who had previously been the Managing Director of the McCarter Theater,  was announced as the next Managing Director of The Old Globe in San Diego. Because the McCarter job opened up, I was sure the board might take the opportunity to hire someone new to managing an organization. Of course, I was wrong. They hired Michael Rosenberg, the Managing Director at La Jolla Playhouse (in San Diego) to lead the McCarter. What did La Jolla Playhouse do, you ask? They promoted long-time General Manager Debby Bucholz to Managing Director, without doing an open search.

Over the late 2010s, the merry-go-round kept going. 

Tom Parrish moved from Geva Theater as Managing Director to Trinity Rep as an Executive Director to Berkeley Rep where he replaced Susie Medak. Tom’s role at Geva was succeeded by Christopher Manneli from Victory Gardens (he now runs the Huntington Theater in Boston, replacing Micahel Maso). David Schmitz moved from Steppenwolf Theater Company to Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Barry Grove was succeeded by Christopher Jennings who was the Executive Director of Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C. 

This is one of the reasons I decided to work in executive search. The leadership experience and thinking in the theater field were being recycled and retained at the expense of new leaders and perspectives. Do not get me wrong - I do not blame these managers. They are talented people who deserve their roles.

But I argue that this phenomenon of choosing candidates as managing directors who have done the job before comes at the expense of talented managers and promising arts executives leaving the field. What was not calculated as a consequence of any of these openings and searches was the damage that would be done to the theater workforce. This has caused us to allow good, capable leaders to be burned out by the COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020. The existential crises facing the field left many to wonder if we would have a moment of renewal, but we did not. Boards and staff retreated to old practices due to the dismal numbers of subscribers and donors who walked away from their tickets and gifts. 

While successes and strides have been made in the LORT system, the merry-go-round of leadership succession highlights a missed opportunity for field-wide consideration of skills and experiences needed for a 21st-century environment and workforce. The search firms leading these efforts have contributed to the very situation we face today - a circle. A never ending loop. The conversations of the last 75 years of theatermaking were concentrated in 70 positions by even the most modest count representing literally centuries of experience. The simultaneous departure of experienced professionals, replaced by similar rather than diverse expertise, has hindered the productivity, innovation, and fresh thinking that our field desperately needs.

The leadership merry-go-round frustrates the next generation of leaders, who do not understand how one advances a career and makes a living. This is felt acutely in the larger economy and has pinched mid-level arts workers in a tightly wound bind - there is nowhere to climb at a clear and rapid pace where their wage gains will increase as the cost of living skyrockets. Workers who have arts management degrees are competing with workers with years of experience in the field and how it has traditionally operated over the last 15 years. They also face the problem of “compound pressure” in the arts - as productivity in the arts stagnates, costs rise, and revenue pressure rises (thank you Baumol and Bowen). The rising revenue pressure means boards look for executives who have raised more and more funds for organizations. A mid-level arts manager looking for a way towards promotion finds themselves not only stuck but structurally behind. 

The merry-go-round keeps the theater field at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to talent. The talent leaves, unhappy with the work environment, and does not return. Years of investment have gone out the door for more money, a better work/life balance, and much less drama and agonizing. 

So how do we get off the merry-go-round? How do we not keep going in circles? 

A few ways. 

First, we must train and build practical skill sets for arts managers in the 21st century. While Zelda Fichandler might have worried about theaters becoming too much of an institutional project, it has come into being whether we like it or not. Managers are entering a different world where larger forces are at play. We need to teach people how to navigate new terrain such as climate disasters, political upheaval, technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, and economic booms and busts, and changes in audience purchasing behaviors. 

Second, we have to look for new talent, get them in the door, and keep them here. Theater and art-making can be grueling, but they should not be the in all and be all of one's life. We do not demonstrate that kind of balance to aspiring leaders. Yes, you must work hard and produce results AND you can do it in a way that does not make you leave the field screaming. Our firm prioritizes talking to people we have not met before and who bring different perspectives to an organization. Our firm centers the human experience.

Finally, we must continue to shake up the ways we conduct executive searches and explain to people how these processes operate in a fair and reasonably transparent way. Workers I meet who are not executives are confused about what paths get them to the Managing Director chair. Saying you have to have done the job before is not good enough. People have hired me to find executives - and I had never searched for an executive before! It can happen and the bank does not have to break. 

Disrupting the merry-go-round over the next several years is critical for arts management and the leadership of some of the largest predominantly white and culturally specific organizations. If we bleed talent out of the sector after so much investment and training, new ideas and ways of working will not come. 

I believe the work we are doing at EMC is a generational project - to train the next set of arts and nonprofit leaders for the next 100 years. But we cannot do that by going in circles like some of my colleagues and their firms have chosen. There is a different path for our field. 

And that path is only one way - 

Forward.