This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's theater podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars, creators, and industry leaders bringing Broadway and the theater industry back to life.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, we're looking to the future and finding out what theater and live performance need to move forward, and hearing it from the artists, leaders, donors, and administrators who are on the ground and doing the work.

[0:31] Gordon Cox: Earlier this year, the Sundance Institute commissioned the artist, producer, and longtime dramaturg Jesse Cameron Alick to conduct an in-depth study to discover what the institute, and by extension, the entire theater field, can learn from the events of 2020.

[0:46] Gordon Cox: Alick is the former company dramaturg at the Public Theater and has just recently been appointed the Associate Artistic Director at the Vineyard Theater. And for the study, he spoke to more than 70 theater people, many of whom have appeared on this very podcast, including Lynn Nottage, Michael R. Jackson, Whitney White, Maria Goyanes, Shayna Taub, Nataki Garrett, and many more.

[1:05] Gordon Cox: Alick is in the virtual studio with me to tell us what theater makers have learned, what they lost, and what they urgently need to carry them into the future. Hey Jesse, thanks for joining me.

[1:14] Jesse Cameron Alick: Thank you for having me.

[1:17] Gordon Cox: Yeah. I wonder if we could start off with just having you tell us a little bit about the impetus behind the study and how you got involved.

[1:25] Jesse Cameron Alick: Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, let's see, everything starts with the Sundance Theater program, which as I'm sure you know, occupied such an important place in the theater community for over 40 years, I believe. Um so uh the artistic director there, Philip Himberg, um left, and Carrie Putnam, who is the brilliant executive director over at Sundance, oversees everything that Sundance does, really wanted to figure out a way that the program could reinvent itself.

[1:48] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um and she started sort of chatting with people, you know, um, about like um what the future of the field was and what the future of theater was. And she had great gut instincts. Actually, uh before we go too far down that we should maybe back up just a little bit to talk about for people who are maybe not familiar with what the Sundance Institute does, if they're more familiar with the film festival or something.

[2:07] Jesse Cameron Alick: I mean, chances are the Sundance Institute was involved in multiple shows you have seen on Broadway or at your local playhouse or things like that. They are uh a big developmental uh sort of powerhouse in terms of the talent they get and the projects that end up sort of moving on from there, right?

[2:26] Jesse Cameron Alick: I I couldn't agree more with you. Um Sundance um uh the theater program at Sundance has uh touched so many different projects that I love and are close to my heart. A Passing Strange, which was one of the first musicals, you know, that I really worked on at the Public Theater. Um and it just like you know, it felt like Stu reached into my life and read my diary out loud with that one.

[2:44] Jesse Cameron Alick: And that started um at Sundance as well as Fun Home, as well as a number of uh big sort of projects. Um and the way that the Sundance program works is that they take artists um and they take them um to their uh their um their place in Utah, um their retreat center in Utah, which is completely gorgeous, up in the middle of the mountains in the middle of nowhere, and they just give them all the resources that they possibly can give artists, and there's no producers come there.

[3:08] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, and the artists are just allowed to work for three weeks um on whatever they want to work on. Um, and it's been a really successful model for producing good work.

[3:16] Gordon Cox: Yeah, but so now it sounds like they're thinking about making some changes. Uh tell us more about sort of that and the sort of how how the survey is involved.

[3:24] Jesse Cameron Alick: Sure. Um, so um after Philip left, uh Carrie had the sort of gut instinct that um theater program needed to change. And um, and I think that she had a gut instinct that a lot of people in the field had that like things needed to change. Um, and boy was she right, you know, and I think the pandemic hit and we realized everything really needed to change.

[3:41] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, I've been a dramaturg with Sundance over the last like three or four years. They bring me up to the retreats, and I was lucky enough to sit, you know, and talk with amazing artists. And so Carrie and I have known each other for quite a while. And when the pandemic hit, she and I started to get into conversations.

[3:55] Jesse Cameron Alick: And over the course of six months, we just talked about what the field, what was happening in the field, what we wanted to have happen. Um and eventually I asked Carrie if I could take the baton from her on this sort of on the conversations that she had already started with a number of people um in the field.

[4:09] Jesse Cameron Alick: And then I took the baton and I kind of ran with it. Um the idea for the idea or the original idea for this um study was uh to be an internal document for Sundance. And I was um instructed to talk to people about the field and talk to them about Sundance and how the Sundance, the impact of the Sundance Theater Program and where it could go and how it could expand.

[4:28] Jesse Cameron Alick: And I definitely got into those conversations. But as I talked with people, it was kind of amazing. We just started to talk about everything. We started talking about you know the Black Lives Matter resurgence, you know, the theater field in general, um, how we paid our artists, who should be leading us, who is in the conversations, and and as I spoke with them, the interviews just became bigger and the project became bigger than it originally was.

[4:50] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, and like the good producer and dramaturg I am, I decided to create a new form to fit the bigness of the served vision of it. And that's how we have the study right now, right?

[5:00] Gordon Cox: Yeah, and so what from your impression, what did you feel like? Uh you sort of touched on this a little bit. What did you feel like Sundance in particular wanted to get out of this study? And then what did you personally want to get out of, or you know, creatively and professionally want to get out of this study as you started doing it?

[5:17] Jesse Cameron Alick: Uh and those things overlap. If there's a Venn diagram of what Sundance wanted and what I wanted, there'd be some overlap, but there'd be some differences too. Um, because I will say that um uh Sundance wanted to know what the future of live performance was going to be like, theater and live performance.

[5:31] Jesse Cameron Alick: And they wanted to have real findings from people who had gone to Sundance and people who had not gone to Sundance about what the field's impression of Sundance was. Where that the place that it held in the field, the position that held and the place that it could hold.

[5:56] Jesse Cameron Alick: And it was and they were wondering if that was the right way to move forward. So I definitely had a lot of conversations with people about that, you know, and I think that goal was met. And I will say that, like in terms of what I wanted from this sort of um, you know, this um project was one, I definitely wanted to help Sundance.

[6:14] Jesse Cameron Alick: I have a vested interest in the theater program coming back. I think it was vital to what um you know the field is, and I think it was vital to the work that they um that they do at Sundance. And so I really wanted to be involved in that, but I will also say that um an impulse that was like that attracted me to this project and really overcame me was the opportunity to gossip with people.

[6:33] Jesse Cameron Alick: You know, that this is what we do so much in the theater is we talk, you know, and if I have one um talent as a dramaturg, it's my talent to sit with people and have a conversation and let the truth rise to the surface. Um, and so the opportunity to go and talk with people for just an hour, all these interviews were were less than an hour for the most part, and just talk to them about how they were doing and what was going on, what their ideas um were was incredibly attractive and it did not disappoint.

[6:57] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, I will say that the pandemic was hard, you know, for all of us. It was hard for me, um, especially, and just getting the opportunity to talk with people, um, it saved me. And before we get into the sort of specifics of what you found in this survey, what broadly did you find you got from this study that you maybe didn't expect, you personally?

[7:20] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um uh that is a very good question. I think there was like a lot of sort of surprising things. I'd say that the the the first most surprising surprising thing is that I spoke with a lot of different artists um and different arts workers um uh from all across the United States from a number of different countries, um, and the exact same things came up in the conversation.

[7:37] Jesse Cameron Alick: And seeing the sort of collective consciousness at work was delightful. And and seeing literally dozens of people um talking to me about the same problem and offering up similar solutions to that problem was a beautiful thing. It really made me think, oh, you know, despite being separate, we in sort of theater and live performance, we're on the same page.

[7:55] Jesse Cameron Alick: We all understand what the problems are. We might argue about the solutions, but we know what's wrong um in the sort of like field. Um, and and then one of the biggest, you know, and I'm sure we'll come to this later on, but one of the biggest um uh findings um that I found surprising and beautiful was the idea of field ideation.

[8:12] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, and that the idea that theater and live performance need a home for thought and conversation. Um, and that right now um we do not have an ability to have a healthy conversation. Right. Um I think our conversations get very tense. I think that um uh oftentimes leadership and people institutions clam up and you know and hold things tight and they're very, very worried.

[8:32] Jesse Cameron Alick: There's quite a lot of fear um and apprehension um in the field, and we have to, like any family, we have to figure out how to talk to each other and work things out. And so many people said the exact same thing.

[8:42] Gordon Cox: Huh. Yeah. Before we go more into that, let's talk a little bit more about the pool of people you talked to, sort of how many people you talked to and what your goals were in terms of the makeup of who they are and what they're you know, how they identified on whatever level and what their various roles were in the industry. How did you sort of think about putting that uh group together?

[9:02] Jesse Cameron Alick: So, um, I I um I uh started with the sort of goals with Sundance. Um with uh Michelle Satter and Carrie Putnam at Sundance. We talked about the goals quite a lot, and um, we set the sort of like modest goals of me talking to 40 different individuals and then writing a 10-page report, you know, which makes me smile because like that didn't happen, you know.

[9:19] Jesse Cameron Alick: Because as I started to talk to people, people would say to me, 'Are you talking to so-and-so? ' And then I talked to that first, and they were like, 'Have you talked to so-and-so? ' And so it led me on a kind of journey where eventually I ended up interviewing 76 people.

[9:30] Jesse Cameron Alick: And I believe that the report, including all the profiles, is about 150 pages now, which is completely delightful. Um, so um, the um the goal was to, you know, have a breadth of people, you know, to have represented, you know, artists and arts workers, um, to have different disciplines um uh represented, um, to have, you know, not only theater, but actually theater and live performance, which is an important distinction because we were even in the the sort of impulse in the study, we are questioning what theater is, you know, um, and that theater belongs to a bigger family, which is theater and live performance.

[10:03] Jesse Cameron Alick: And I think the pandemic was really um right from the very beginning, it started to blur the lines between what is theater and what is live performance. So we wanted a lot of representations, you know, um, in all of that, and of course, you know, um, because of who I am and how I walk through the world, it was really important for me to have um a lot of sort of different uh racial representations um as well.

[10:21] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, the the methodology I will say that I used was not, you know, I I don't think that like you could put my methodology in a book because eventually or essentially I said, uh, who do I want to talk to? You know, who do I miss? You know, who's smart? Who would I go to for advice?

[10:35] Jesse Cameron Alick: And I just started hitting up the sort of like, you know, artists that I know personally, artists that I know their work, um, and I know that they've said smart things. And I just sort of started to collect people. Um, um, the interdisciplinary staff um at the uh at the um Sundance Institute also contributed a number of names that of people that I didn't know, especially people working at interdisciplinary new media sort of people.

[10:56] Jesse Cameron Alick: And that was fantastic as well. Um, but I I did definitely my methodology methodology was to reach my hands into the pool that exists and see what came back.

[11:06] Gordon Cox: Um primarily artists or entirely artists, or there were some who are not uh yeah, tell us more about sort of who, in addition to kind of playwrights and uh other creators, like who else did uh what other kinds of roles in the industry did you talk to?

[11:22] Jesse Cameron Alick: I mean, and I um uh primarily artists. This question um uh demands the the follow-up question, what is an artist? You know, which I'll set aside for later on. Um, but um uh it was definitely like sort of playwrights um and directors, you know, church filling playwrights, directors, lyricists, composers, you know, it was choreographers um as well.

[11:39] Jesse Cameron Alick: It was a lot of interdisciplinary artists um who um, and by that I mean people who are working with new media and often live on stage, but working with, you know, sort of um technology in an interesting way. For example, Valencia James is an artist who um uh uses sort of um um uh motion capture on her body and then dances in digital environments live in front of a digital audience.

[12:02] Jesse Cameron Alick: Before the pandemic, she danced in front of an actual in-person audience, and now she dances in digital environments for a digital um sort of audience. Those sort of artists as well, um, as well as people who work at institutions, um, a number of artistic directors, a number of dramaturges, um, uh those sorts of um folks, and then a number of donors as well.

[12:21] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, I think I spoke with three or four um donors, people who sit on boards of directors of various sort of institutions. And then lastly, I would say thought leaders, you know, people who are smart and interesting and who we should listen to, you know. Um, and there was definitely a lot of overlap in all these sort of categories. Um the thought leaders are some of the most interesting kinds of people. They do a lot of different things um in the theater and live performance fields. Um, but the definition of who they are is sort of tricky. And so there's no sort of commercial element in terms of what you were looking for in terms of talking to a commercial producer, for instance, or something like that.

That was not was that something you thought about for thank you. Thank you for pointing that out, Gordon. I did speak to a couple of um commercial um theater producers um as well. Um the um, you know, Mara Isaacs runs octopus um uh theatricals and was one of the commercial theater uh theater producers that I spoke with. It's interesting, you know, because she and even in a she's an institutional background, right? Exactly. She she she exists in a liminal space, you know. So even thinking about Mara as a commercial theater producer is a little tricky in my head, even though I know, of course, she does do that.

[13:24] Gordon Cox: And so these were uh virtually uh conducted, I'm guessing.

[13:29] Jesse Cameron Alick: The interviews every single one of these interviews was conducted right here where we are right now. Um and it was all recorded, uh it was all recorded on Zoom, and then I did the transcripts um uh afterwards. Um there's there was lots of questions that were asked. I mean, we had some form questions that Sundance um helped me come up with. Um, but it's worth saying that the conversations took a life of their own.

[13:50] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I was just gonna ask, uh is there I imagine people had a lot to say, it sounds like.

[13:55] Jesse Cameron Alick: Oh, they had a lot to say. They were spilling all the tea, all the gossip. Um, and it was it was totally delightful to talk with them, you know, about what was going on and what their experience was. You know, because like we were all we were all locked apart from each other, and and in many ways we still are locked apart from um from each other. And people really had like interesting things to say and interesting reflections. I think the pandemic also, it's worth saying has changed us. It's changed us all individually, you know, um being scared in our homes and really thinking about like what we're doing as artists, as people who work in theater, you know, what we can contribute. And it's made people more honest and more, you know, forthright and uh and really demanding things, you know, and demanding the truth.

Um, so it's worth saying that the conversations were very honest. Um, people told me the absolute truth. I also said to every single person that, you know, if you say anything you don't want in the report, I will not put in the report. You know, there are no got you moments, you know, there is no scandal. I'm not trying to out anyone. And that actually freed people up to just talk to me um about whatever they wanted.

[14:58] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Jesse right after the break.

[15:14] Jesse Cameron Alick: And so what did they talk to you about? Uh kind of uh talk talk us through sort of broadly what you found and what you ended up discussing, uh sort of distilling down uh the kind of all the many voices into kind of broader uh themes.

[15:30] Jesse Cameron Alick: Well, I'll say this, you know, um uh as I talked with people, I I interviewed people, I asked them what they did and and and who they are. I asked them about um what the pandemic had taken from them and what the pandemic had given to them. Um I asked them about their experience in the Black Lives Matter, um, resurgence, you know, what they thought about the field, how the field was handling white supremacy and anti blackness um more specifically. Um, I I talked to them about what they thought the future was going to be. Um uh and I I talked to them about what they thought the future was going to be and what they wanted the future to be, you know. Um so like we talked about a lot of different things in these sort of things.

And it's worth saying that in the when I started this study, I didn't know the form the study was going to take. Um and then as I spoke with people, people started repeating the same things, you know, like all the conversations, probably about halfway through my interviews. Um, I started to see the themes. They were rising towards the top, and people very largely agreed upon um the most important things uh for the theater and light performance fields to concentrate um in the future on.

[16:36] Gordon Cox: Um so tell us about those. Talk us through those.

[16:40] Jesse Cameron Alick: Okay, great. Um well, I'll I'll just go in order because that's the way I think about uh about them. Um, even as I talk, I've lived with this report for such a long time, you know, and it just like really, you know, it exists in my head and crossed. Well, you started in January, is that right?

[16:54] Jesse Cameron Alick: January is when I started the years, yeah. Uh which is interesting because like I will say that like um I think that time moves so quickly now. Um, and so these these interviews were captured between January and uh I would say end of April of this year. Um, and but even in the last two months, things have started to evolve. But what I will say is I'm very pleased to watch as things start to change. Um, they're matching my themes. I'm glad that reality actually agrees with the sort of conclusions that I came up with. Um so the the first theme um uh was shared leadership. Um and this was the idea of really um uh uh discussing the way in which um the way that we have leaders structured in uh the American theater and sort of the international theater is a system that isn't working.

Um, and that a lot of people know that it's not working. It hasn't been working for um uh a while. Um, and breaking open the idea that this is the only way that we can have that we can run institutions or run theaters, um, and that there are different ways. Um there's different you're talking specifically about the sort of hierarchical artistic director, for instance, one you know, kind of tenth pole position that uh I absolutely am I absolutely am whether you call that person an artistic director or you know, artistic producer or head head um you know curator, they're they're sort of called different things depending on the institution. But like, yes, we're talking about the person in charge and that person making all the decisions about what is good and what is substandard um and how um to lead the institution.

Um and like um the really sort of big takeaway um uh that I got from um my interviews and uh the conclusion that I set forth in the study is that the solution to this system of cisgendered white male supremacy in sort of like you know, um these institutions is not to get rid of all the white guys leading the institutions and replace them with black guys leading the institutions. That's actually not the solution, and um people knew that. Um it's the solution rather was to reshape the idea of leadership itself, you know, um and bring and start experimenting with other ideas of um uh shared or circular leadership, um, where that has maybe you have four artistic directors, like the Wilma Theater um has where each season a different artistic director is curating it, but all throughout all the artistic directors are there helping out with the sort of um process.

Um uh so four different artistic directors, or you have one artistic director that doesn't make any of the decisions without a council of sort of people, or you have two artistic directors. Um, they're always in conversation with each other. Um the idea that um institutions can um can be led by one person um is kind of I think it's an antique um sort of idea, and I think it's also connected to um the capitalist way in which we think of things of one person being great. Um, and the idea that a lot of people have brought forth was everyone can be great, you know, and then if we have shared leadership, it will actually bring in different points of view into the conversation. It will put leadership into conflict with itself, you know, where we actually have to have conversations about things that we uh disagree upon, and that will actually lead to more exciting things, experimentation riskier art.

[19:55] Gordon Cox: Right.

[19:55] Jesse Cameron Alick: Yeah, yeah.

[19:56] Gordon Cox: Um, so that's one.

[19:58] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um there's four, you know. So we'll get to it. Um the next one was uh holistic artist support.

[20:06] Gordon Cox: Right.

[20:07] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um and um, you know, it's it's worth saying, like Gordon, a lot of these sort of themes, um like when you talk about them sort of casually, they have a kind of yeah, totally, you know, they have a feeling to them of I kind of knew that, like, you know, like for example, for example, with holistic artist support, you know, um, I I a number of people talked to me about how artists are not doing well. Um, and they haven't been doing well in the sort of theater and live performance field for a really long time. I will say that institutionally before the pandemic, I think things were going great for institutions. I think money was being made. I think there was like, you know, a sort of a lot of institutions had deals with commercial theater producers and Broadway, and there was like, you know, real revenue streams um uh that were being built.

Um, but the money wasn't getting to the artists. Um the the sort of industry remained a place that if you want to be um uh a theater and life performance artist, you have to have another job, or you have to be supported, you know, by something else, you know, like family inheritance or something like that. And then the pandemic hit, and then I think that everything was laid bare, you know, in terms of like pretty much every single one of my friends was on unemployment. Um and so holistic artistic uh support would be things like childcare, or are you thinking sort of broadly for their just you know basic human well-being? Is that the kind of like things that people were talking about?

[21:25] Jesse Cameron Alick: Childcare is something that uh was brought up um in the study, absolutely. Um, and the idea of thinking about people's lives in a holistic sort of um uh you know, 365 degree sort of way. Um, but what I'm talking about is paying artists, though. I'm talking about paying artists more, you know. I'm I'm talking about cash in people's hands. Straight up, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and not only paying artists more, because I think like if we take actors, you know, like you know, paying actors more, you know, is is one sort of step, but uh a bigger step is actually hiring artists. Institutions actually hiring artists. It's you know, it's easy to make, you know, um a living in the theater if you're a marketing manager or if you're a development officer, if you're like a company dramatur, you know, um, although sometimes easy.

Um but like um it's hard to make a living in the theater if you're a playwright. Um and now this is like an inverted pyramid, right? You know, where like you know, we make all of our money off of a small number of artists, and we make a lot of money, enough to support you know, thousands of arts workers, um, and yet not enough money to support the artists themselves. Um the solution is just to hire artists, institutions to just hire artists, give them a salary, give them health insurance, give them all the benefits, and and let them write, you know, let them be directors, let them be designers, let them create work. Um, and it's not just a nice thing to do, you know. I think that we should do it just because it's a nice thing to do, but it's actually the way to create great art, also.

[22:49] Gordon Cox: Yeah, huh. Um, and then there's uh one of the themes isn't involves digital theater as well. Is that right?

[22:56] Jesse Cameron Alick: It does digital theater and hybrid futures.

[22:59] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[23:00] Jesse Cameron Alick: Um, um, so um uh and and that um uh that theme specifically talked about um theater's relationship with technology, you know. Um and I I often say as a joke to people that um if we had our way, theater people would still be lighting the stage with candles. Um but the amazing thing about this pandemic is that it dragged us kicking and screaming, you know, five, 10 years into the future, and suddenly overnight, you know, we had to reckon with things. We had to reckon with Zoom. And listen, a lot of my friends would tell me that you know, Zoom is a horrible thing, and you know, the the art on Zoom is is really quite questionable. But I would say that that you know that that's an interesting thing to say, I think, because if you look at the art on Zoom, sometimes it can be questionable if it wasn't created for Zoom.

Um, but if as we know as artists, you create the art for the medium. And if you look at the work that was actually created for the medium of Zoom, it's amazing, you know. And of course, there are so many different platforms outside of Zoom, and artists have been working on on Twitch, on you know, all sorts of different sorts of things, you know, and creating kind of amazing art over the last year.

[24:05] Gordon Cox: And what was the did you find the consensus was in terms of what makes something theatrical when it exists in another medium? And how do they imagine, how do you find people are imagining the way uh hybrid theater will uh we are, I mean, I think anyway, continue to exist even after we can all you know fully safely be in a room together and read the same thing.

[24:28] Jesse Cameron Alick: Absolutely. Like I will say, you know, at the top of this, that I don't think that theater is going away, traditional theater. I don't think that the, you know, plays and musicals and experimental theater pieces are going away, and we're all gonna like just do this digitally. I think people are starving to be in rooms with each other, and I don't think there's any replacing that sort of experience. But the question was raised like a number of times. So what is live? What are we doing? You know, this conversation that we're having right now, Gordon, this is live, you know, we're both human beings in spaces even though we're not in the same space with each other. And there's a quality to the conversation that's a live conversation.

And I think that the same thing was discovered with a lot of the sort of digital work that was created over the last year. I know a lot of theater artists that have projects in the works where it is a live sort of performance with people in a space with each other, but there are elements of the performance that are happening digitally at the same time and being beamed in in some sort of way into people's sort of world. Yeah, and there are so many reasons to incorporate that that aren't just creative but also in terms of expanding accessibility and things like that. Right? Like there's so many reasons to sort of keep a lot of what we have learned from absolutely well and I think it's a knife that cuts with both ways because in terms of accessibility and I go into this in my study in some ways you know this year like I think really opened up accessibility for a lot of artists with disabilities.

They were able to create art and witness art much more you know than they were in the olden times. And then at the same time a lot of artists that I spoke with you know in the United States and in other countries talked about the barriers the technology you know puts up as well you know in terms of access so like doing just digital theater would be a mistake you know because it would have just as many barriers but it's going to the future is going to be about doing both and finding the pathway to them. I might just add also that an interesting sort of conclusion that I found in the report was that the artists who were already interdisciplinary artists, they were already hyphenate artists, did better during the pandemic.

They were able to pivot. They were able to put their resources somewhere else, their creative resources into something else, and then we were able to continue to create, which is a reason why we should actually be investing in our artists and teaching them the sort of material skills that comes along with technology.

[26:50] Gordon Cox: And then as you mentioned a little earlier in our conversation, field ideation is a big biggie of one of the big things you came out of this study with or talking about, thinking about. What's that mean? And what does it look like? Or do people think it might look like in the future?

[27:11] Jesse Cameron Alick: Field ideation is a very fancy way of saying talking about ideas. And I think that like over the last year, it has been really interesting to witness the field have conversations because we've been having a lot of conversations, you know, and they have been deep and interesting, and there have been a lot of emotions involved in them, and people have enthusiastically joined the conversations and people have enthusiastically backed out of the conversations as well. I will say that like the sort of a diagnosis of I was a doctor talking to the American theater, I'd say you don't know how to talk. You know, you are a family that does not know how to get into a commercial healthy conversations with each other.

It's hard to hear the truth, and it's hard to actually respond to the truth and come up with like ideas and solutions. I mean, I mean it's interesting. Field ideation is my last theme that I talk about in my study, but I actually think it's the first one to start with. You know, that if the field was going to take on something first, it would be field ideation. It'd be creating these sort of centers where we can get into conversations about what's going on. What are the problems? You know, what have we suffered with over the last year? What have we suffered with in the years before that, you know, and really dig into what the solutions are? Because I will also say that like this report filled me with a lot of hope. Like there are smart minds out there in our field, and they have ideas, and a lot of the ideas are good ones. And we need to talk about those ideas and figure them out.

[28:41] Gordon Cox: Is did anyone sort of imagine what a possible forum for this kind of conversation about ideas might be, or how, you know, one might convince a family to talk to engage in more healthy conversation with its members?

[28:56] Jesse Cameron Alick: I'll say this. In terms of like, as with you know, theater and live performance in general is about the place, it's about the location that it happens in. And so a lot of people talked about that. Where do we have these conversations? Um what this is we are in a time right now where artists and a lot of arts workers too have a deep mistrust of institutions. So, what is the right institution to have this conversation? What is the sort of, you know, where do we locate this conversation? A lot of people like sort of talked about parameters about that, you know, what is an ethical institution that can hold these conversations? But no one came to a conclusion about that. And also no one can came to a conclusion about the form that these conversations should take necessarily.

My study in general gives a lot of sort of ideas and it doesn't give a lot of conclusions. It doesn't give a lot of solutions to what our problems are necessarily. But I think the first step is like realizing that you have a problem, you know, and then actually being willing to step into the conversation about let's talk about that sort of problem and figure that out. I know with this study, the Sundance Institute, as soon as we talked, I presented the internal study to them. They're immediately like, let's rewrite this thing for the field. And then like right after that, Carrie, you know, ambitious, you know, person that she is, was like, hey, let's figure out a way to have this conversation in a bigger way, you know.

So like that's what this entire effort is is, you know, we've made, you know, a presentation. We also made a film version of this presentation, directed by filmmaker Zach Murphy, so that people can witness it in different sort of ways depending on how people take in information.

[30:29] Gordon Cox: And where is that? Is that available? You've made the study available at a website called emerging from the cave.com. Is that where that film is, lives as well?

[30:38] Jesse Cameron Alick: So everything is going to be um is gonna live on emerging from the cave.com. Um, so if you go to that website, you'll be able to one see the presentation, which is totally beautiful and designed very well, and then you'll also be able to see the film, you know, which is beautiful if you if you can stand my voice for that long, you know. And then also we had a feed we have a feedback portal also where we're hoping that people like go to this website, um they witness the presentation or they see the film or they do both, and then they give us feedback about things that we missed. Um, I'm only one person and I only I did this in six months, and there are tons of things that I missed and tons of ideas that I did not capture in this.

And the hopes is that we can start gathering these sort of other ideas um and figure out the sort of next step. Um, and Carrie is very excited about the idea of also doing a live convening of this sort of, you know, to discuss this document, um, discuss the ideas in it, you know, sort of wisdom held, and also talk about all the things that this document missed and continue the conversation.

[31:36] Gordon Cox: Yeah. We spoke a little bit about this before we turned the microphones on, but you are in a process of transition yourself. You are just starting a new gig at a new theater for you. How do all the things that you have learned from this study, how do you anticipate all the things you have learned from this study influencing the way you do your job going forward?

[32:00] Jesse Cameron Alick: Yeah. And as I said when we were talking Gordon you've caught me at such an interesting day it's my last day at the public theater after 15 years which is an institution that I literally grew up in. You know I became a man at the public theater. And then also I started at the Vineyard theater as the associate artistic director. I feel like the universe always rhymes you know things happen at the same time to influence you know things and I don't think that like this moment could have been better shaped. Doing this report taught me a lot. It shaped me it made me think about what artists need and what my priorities should be and what really the priorities that everyone should have at institutions but I'll speak for myself that like doing this report and you know spending so much time with it really taught me how I should be working as someone who is a supporter of artists. So I anticipate carrying a lot you know into my sort of new roles at the vineyard.

[32:56] Gordon Cox: Can you give us some specifics by any chance in terms of insights that you gained that you maybe hadn't thought as much as you feel like you should have previous to this?

[32:56] Jesse Cameron Alick: You know, a big sort of insight that I had doing this report is that racism and anti-blackness in the theater is real. It's really real and of course, I'm a black man, I'm working in the American theater. So I knew that but I believe that like my sort of policy before doing this report was that great, we have to find ways to navigate around that. We have to figure out how to get our work done despite that. And thus my career has been full, full of theatrical projects that really fight against racism and anti-blackness on the stage, you know, but backstage, you know, and in the office, it's still occurring and stuff. And I think that before this year, I thought that that was impossible to change.

I and I think that I mean the entire year but doing this report really taught me that everything is possible, and actually anything can happen, which is terrifying, but it's also really, really exciting. So I think that the ways in which we can have like, you know, sort of anti-racist, you know, practices in the rehearsal room as we're reading scripts, as we're talking to playwrights is really important and interesting. I think that also you know the influence of money is inescapable in the American theater. And I do think that we need to need to accept that. But I think that like we have to commit ourselves to ways to make sure artists can feed themselves. They can't create the work if they can't put you know food on the table.

And I think that at the vineyard, that'll be a really big concentration of mine is figure out ways. How can we have resident artists? How can we get people health insurance, you know, which one would think that that isn't my job, you know, as a sort of dramaturge, but it is my job is to make sure that this writer can write a good play and they need dinner and the ability to go to a doctor in order to do that. So that's definitely sort of you know, things that I'm thinking of. And then one last thing I'd say is that I think that there's incredible gravity right now at work as theaters start to open up. And I think that gravity is pulling us back to what was, and I think that we have to resist the urge to go back to what was because it wasn't good and also because trying to go back to what was will not be successful. The old world is gone, you know? The new world is waiting for us, and we're at the edge of a cliff, and we're gonna fall either way. So like we either fall in fear or we fall in leap and excitement.

[35:40] Gordon Cox: And I think we all look forward to seeing what the new world will bring us. So thank you, Jesse. Thanks for chatting with me. Nice to talk to you.

[35:43] Jesse Cameron Alick: Thank you, it's a pleasure.

[35:48] Gordon Cox: That was Jesse Cameron Alick, who worked with the Sundance Institute to conduct the independent study Emerging from the Cave, Reimagining Our Future and Live Performance. The study is out today, and you can find out more at Emerging From The Cave.com. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd so appreciate it if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps us grow our audience of folks who love theater as much as you and I do. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft. Find past episodes or subscribe on all the pod places, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. I'll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. Thanks for listening and see you soon.