4-3-09
Exodus at American Theatre Company
On Thursday, March 26th, 23 members of American Theater Company’s ensemble announced that they were breaking off from ATC. Instead of celebrating their upcoming 25th anniversary season in the venue many of them had helped build, the departing artists will now produce under the company’s original moniker, American Blues Theater.
Those leaving have long roots not only with ABT/ATC, but in off-Loop theatre and beyond, including Rick Cleveland, Carmen Roman, James Leaming, Kate Buddeke, Stef Tovar and Gwendolyn Whiteside. One name not mentioned by the departing members in their press release was ATC artistic director PJ Paparelli, who took the job in November of 2007 after serving over three years as artistic director for Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska.
Within hours, rumors were flying around the internet, most notably at Chris Jones’s “The Theater Loop” blog at the Chicago Tribune—as I write this, the entry now has over 100 comments appended to it. The news provided a handy hook upon which some could hang their pet theories within the safety of online anonymity. Some commentators maintained that the split was inevitably the result of a typical Chicago ensemble of white middle-aged actors upset about fighting for stage time with younger, more diverse casts. Others warned that this situation was the equally inevitable result of hiring an artistic director outside the ensemble (though the immediate past AD, Damon Kiely, was also from outside the acting ensemble). Still others claimed inside knowledge of Paparelli’s management style from working with him at both ATC and at Perseverance.
It’s clear from talking to several of the affected parties that, though the announcement may have been a shock to the theatre community, differences had been brewing between Paparelli and many members of the ensemble for a few months prior to the final break.
Paparelli, whose resume also includes a six-year stint as the associate director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., maintains that he was moving the theatre in a direction that the board wanted, and that ATC’s own name and mission statement demanded. That mission statement reads: “American Theater Company is an ensemble of artists committed to producing new and classic American stories that ask the question: ‘What does it mean to be an American?’ We provide a truly intimate home for the community to experience meaningful stories. We foster a nurturing environment for artists to take risks and create essential work.”
The tension seems to lie between the first and the third sentences. Says Paparelli, “When I came into the theatre 17 months ago, it was because of that mission—to ask questions about ‘What does it mean to be an American?’ I thought the theatre company and the engine that drives it are the vast questions about what is happening in America. That has been a big part of my life as an artist.” (Paparelli is also the founder of the United States Theatre Project, through which he developed columbinus, about the Columbine shootings. The Raven Theatre production, under Greg Kolack’s direction, won Kolack a non-Equity Jeff Award last year.)
Paparelli’s first programming decision, precipitated when a cast member’s illness led to the cancellation of the spring 2008 production of Born Yesterday, was to slot in Stephen Karam’s high school comedy, Speech & Debate, which won high critical praise under Paparelli’s direction. The 2008-2009 season opened with The People’s Temple, a docu-drama about the Jonestown massacre by Tectonic Theatre Project member Leigh Fondakowski, and has included a collaboration with Congo Square Theatre Company on Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog and Sam Shepard’s True West, in which the black and white casts of each show eventually switched to the other production.
“If you’re going to diversify, token changes are disrespectful,” says Paparelli. “If our name is America and what America means today, that means a truthful and comprehensive exploration and having lots of voices at the table.” He further notes, “Most of these tensions are around programming and casting” and that “if you’re in an ensemble, you can feel hurt if you’re not getting work.”
“It’s not about casting. It’s about collaboration,” says Kate Buddeke. A life member of the ensemble, Buddeke was sent an e-mail from the ATC board on February 25th informing her that she was dismissed from the company—the event that became the final straw for those ensemble members who decided to depart last week.
Programming decisions and changes did have a role in the escalating conflicts, however, before that letter was sent. Buddeke says that, in recognition of the company’s 25th year, “we wanted a slot that was for the ensemble. We wanted to bring together people like Dennis Cockrum, Carmen, and also new ensemble members to celebrate.” According to Buddeke, at one of the weekly ensemble meetings (instituted by Paparelli) in mid-January, “we were like, ‘We want to have a show.’ He walked out of the meeting. He had an alternative for us that we didn’t want—a late-night thing that we wouldn’t be able to all work on together.” (Buddeke declined to name the piece that the ensemble preferred, since the newly re-formed American Blues team may decide to seek the rights later.)
Paparelli says that he was supportive of the idea of an all-ensemble show and suggested that Cleveland write a piece for the entire ensemble, with Paparelli videotaping interviews with newer members whom Cleveland, who lives in Los Angeles, didn’t know. However, when that didn’t work out due to scheduling conflicts on Cleveland’s part, “conversations got more heated.” The situation got hotter when the spring show, the musical Yeast Nation: The Triumph of Life, created by the Urinetown team of Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis and originally staged by Paparelli at Perseverance in the summer of 2007, was pushed back to fall 2009 so the creators could work on it some more. According to Paparelli, “When we were looking into filling the slot, I was very concerned about honoring the subscribers and doing an outside-the-box musical.” He ended up choosing Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (one of the shows he programmed at Perseverance), which just opened in association with About Face Theatre.
According to Paparelli, “I found out some members of the ensemble were breaking the confidentiality in the community and questions were coming back to the theatre [about the programming change]: ‘Do they have no money? Why are they doing this?’ All of this hearsay was spinning out of these group meetings. I found that in order to have the clarity that I needed, the group environment was becoming unhealthy.”
Consequently, the board sent an e-mail on Feb. 4, one that board president John Goldstein describes as “kind of a friendly thing, saying let’s take a step back and let PJ do his thing.” It asked that the ensemble follow a three-week moratorium on the board or ensemble giving feedback to Paparelli on the next season. Goldstein then left the country for a planned vacation to Sudan, where he was not able to access e-mail for much of the trip. During his absence, things went downhill rapidly. Says Goldstein, “All I know is that I went away and things were the way they were, and I came back and they were a different way.”
On Feb. 20, board vice president Jeff Morof and board member David Katz sent an e-mail to the ensemble, instituting a “six-month period of reflection and evaluation for the ensemble to commence immediately,” during which time ensemble members were to decide if they could “support the artistic director and his artistic vision.” Those who felt they couldn’t were offered the possibility of accepting “emeritus” status. Paparelli maintains that he did return e-mails and phone calls from some ensemble members after the board moratorium went out.
That same day, three members of the ensemble—Buddeke, Stef Tovar, and Gwendolyn Whiteside—received calls from Morof and Katz, requesting that they step down from the ensemble. Tovar, who was interim artistic director prior to Paparelli’s arrival, responded with an e-mail declining the invitation to leave.
“I wasn’t one of the first ones to say, ‘We should quit ATC,’” says Tovar. “I was one of the first to be a whistle blower, to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, I knew this actress was going to get fired from Yeast Nation in November and it’s January and she hasn’t been told yet.’” (Tovar declined to name the actor in question, saying only that she wasn’t a member of the ensemble.)
Buddeke says that Paparelli didn’t tell the cast of Yeast Nation for a month that the show was going to be postponed. “That’s disrespect for my fellow actors, our fellow actors. You can’t treat people in this community like this because ATC’s name becomes shit.”
Morof, who joined the ATC board in December of 2007 and has been vice president since last summer, says that he was “not aware of the problems [between Paparelli and the ensemble] until the last several weeks. I had not heard any complaints at all about the plays that we were doing. PJ was always very inclusive…I never heard any concerns that PJ wasn’t listening to them or that they were dissatisfied with play selection.” Morof, who declined to mention specific names, says that the moratorium on communication between Paparelli and the ensemble was instituted in part because “we [the board] got an e-mail from one of the ensemble members trying to convince us that we should do a play that PJ rejected. We were very clear that the board doesn’t get involved in artistic decisions and that it is PJ’s prerogative as to what the final season will be.”
For his part, Goldstein, who has been board president since last July and, despite rumors, did not resign from the board, says, “The way I see things, anybody can say anything to anybody. It doesn’t mean that the person who sent the e-mail is trying to bypass anybody. I’m friends with the ensemble. I never had any evidence that PJ cared if they sent me an e-mail. I never heard him say, ‘Don’t e-mail the board.’” Goldstein also says, “I never felt the ensemble cornered me and tried to badmouth PJ. I want that clear. I don’t think any of them were out to get PJ.” Still, Goldstein admits, “You’d have to be kind of deaf, dumb, and blind not to know that things were going on.”
“For over a month, we the ensemble had been trying to open communications, trying our hardest” says Buddeke. “PJ cut off communications, period. That’s the thing that has been a long time coming. He’s slowly, between the staff, the board, and the ensemble, cut off communications between each branch. We’re not allowed to talk to the staff, the staff wasn’t allowed to talk to us. It’s theatre. You can’t cut off communications.” Buddeke also says, “The worst thing is that if we disagree with him and we can’t talk to him anymore and people are asked to leave, that creates an atmosphere of fear. You can’t possibly create in that environment.”
As for suggestions that competitiveness over casting was a driving consideration for the departing ensemble members, Buddeke, who has worked on Broadway and just recently finished a stint in Macbeth at Chicago Shakespeare, said, “I’ve done six shows [with ATC] in 22 years. If casting was an issue, do you think I’d still be here?”
Longtime ensemble member Carmen Roman, whose husband, actor and designer James Leaming, is one of the founders of the original American Blues Theater (along with Cleveland, Ed Blatchford, and William Payne), notes that Paparelli urged the company to adopt an ensemble charter that was ratified in June of 2008. Says Roman, “We were pressured by PJ and the board about including language for the expulsion of ensemble members. We were assured it was just a procedural thing. You look back and realize that he had been planning on neutralizing the company for a while.”
But the board’s expulsion of Buddeke (and strong suggestions that Tovar and Whiteside should step down) seem to violate the charter. The relevant section reads in part: “If the artistic director and/or any three ensemble members identify misconduct, or repeated neglect or disregard for the values and procedures outlined in this charter, the artistic director and/or said ensemble members must first attempt to directly communicate any concerns to the ensemble member in question.” If attempts at mediation fail, then the charter calls for a petition to remove an ensemble member, with a vote to take place at a meeting with notification to the full ensemble 10 days in advance. The board only has discretion to remove a member if there are “negative financial and legal ramifications for the organization and the artistic director.”
Roman says that the ensemble sent a letter to Paparelli and the board pointing out the violations of the charter, and never received a response. And the suggestion that the older members of the ensemble were reluctant to embrace more multicultural programming, says Roman, “was a real stab. We’ve co-produced with Teatro Vista [with Lisa Loomer’s Living Out in 2005]. We have a history of multicultural production.”
From Tovar’s perspective, Paparelli misrepresented himself during initial interviews with the ensemble. “He presented himself as a gentleman who was very interested in collaborating with the ensemble and who could take us to the next level. During the interviews, John Mohrlein said something like, ‘We’re not looking for someone to be a leader, we’re looking for someone to be an ensemble member.’ PJ seemed really excited and flattered to be a part of that. He sold us a bill of goods as far as someone who wanted to collaborate.”
Paparelli disputes that. “Anyone who wanted to talk to me or had constructive things to say, I would talk to them. The feeling of being left out in the dark just isn’t true.”
Under cover of anonymity, several commentators at Chris Jones’s blog suggested that, had ATC done more digging with Perseverance, they might have found some unflattering things about their new artistic director. However, at least one former collaborator from Perseverance, Ishmael Hope, who worked with Paparelli on Raven Odyssey, a touring show based on Native Alaskan tales, had high praise. “I find him a great listener. He’s got a really strong vision and sometimes an overpowering vision. I found that great to work with.” Hope, who served as Perseverance’s director of outreach, is no longer formally on staff with the company. Perseverance issued a press release on March 31, declining to discuss Paparelli’s tenure and citing legal issues of confidentiality. However, a search of the archives at the Juneau Empire uncovered a letter printed shortly after Paparelli departed Alaska for Chicago and written by a former Perseverance staffer, Patricia Hull, in which she claimed that the theatre had an 89 percent attrition rate in staff during his leadership.
The larger question now, of course, is what happens with both companies. Morof says, “We’ll be announcing the big season shortly. We have our big gala coming up on April 30th. Everybody is on board, everyone is very excited, and everyone completely supports PJ. It’s unfortunate that they left, but there is no embargo or lockout.”
Goldstein says, “PJ has really ratcheted up the programming. He takes risks, but educated risks. He’s innovative, he’s gutsy. And he did use a lot of ensemble members.” But the ATC board president, along with Paparelli, also expressed hope that some of the ensemble members will return from time to time to the company they built.
Buddeke too indicates that support for the newly reborn American Blues Theatre has been substantial. “The incredible thing is the amount of people saying, ‘I want to be on your board.’ New supporters and old ones are coming back to us. Obviously, we don’t have the space anymore. But what’s a space if you can’t talk freely there? It’s sad, because we built that space. But people are offering buildings, co-productions—that happened the very first day. This ensemble is stronger than it’s ever been.”