Laura Penn

Laura, you have been involved in creating new communities for the theater for some time now—what got you started doing that? A lot of people use lip service, but you seem to have a real passion and commitment.

Like many people who turn to the theatre, I suppose, it was in my childhood, one of my first outlets as a “tortured adolescent poet.” I found a sense of community in the arts that has never left me. As I began working professionally, no matter what I was doing, it always circled back to community. I was blessed to begin my career at Arena Stage, where I soon moved into marketing it was for the Living Stage program. When I worked at Seattle Rep my proudest achievements were building a national touring program, creating a long-range cultural diversity plan and helping to design arts-in-education programs. At Intiman, I’m happiest when I’m sharing ideas with and learning from people in other disciplines, other fields, who can help us extend the circle of our work. It’s a way of both creating and living, which is something Bob Alexander of Living Stage really articulated for me—in the moment of creation, we are at our most whole and sanest.

Why haven't more people of color made it into the management rungs of repertory theaters?

I believe the business side of our business is not very embracing of new ideas. My partner and colleague Bartlett Sher says something that I love—that the rehearsal hall always has a place for the last best idea. And you do see that in the work that theatres are producing—look at all the really interesting projects that are being commissioned. But it’s not always true of the administrative side of the field as a whole. We like to believe that new ideas are welcome, but they are not as welcome as we think they are—and by that I mean new ways of looking at things, whether they are coming from people of color, people of different ethnicities, even people who are simply coming in from outside our industry. If you are going to diversify, you have to be open to change, and we haven’t as a field been that open. On a more practical side, there isn’t a lot of movement in the leadership ranks in the management of these organizations; when there is a movement, we all tend to just move to another theatre. Ultimately, as it is in many parts of our American culture, it’s about sharing power and influence.

What's your vision for repertory theater—what should the future look like?

A theatre should look like the world in which it lives, but it should be collaborative, agile and risk taking, and have integrity, perspective, spirit and passion. And that is our goal for INTIMAN today, not in the future.

How do you put together artistic concerns and your relationship to your community?

I’m very lucky to have a partner, Bart Sher, who places as much value as I do on the twin pillars of INTIMAN’s work: art and community. We have a constant open-door dialogue about what we are producing, and the way we produce it. The first question we always ask is, “Why this work, now?” As we choose the plays, we always think about how we can work collaboratively with individuals and/or organizations to engage in a dialogue that is relevant to our community, to who we are as citizens. We don’t do this for every play, of course; sometimes we’ll say, “let’s just produce this one.” But fortunately, both Bart and I—and our Trustees—are all committed to seeing artistic concerns and INTIMAN’s relationship to our community as one thing, not separate ideas.

Tell us what you did with "Our Town"

Our Town included an extended run of the play, but also launched all the components of The American Cycle initiative; its success of Our Town will in many ways be realized over the course of the full five years. It was important that we not simply produce Our Town; we wanted to produce it for our community, and it became a portal into this five-year Cycle. Specifically, The American Cycle includes community readings, humanities forums and arts education programming for multigenerational audiences. One of our most amazing experiences was a series of community readings; we crossed the “aesthetic divide,” something Anna, encouraged us to do, with strangers gathered together in a circle to play husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, coming together for 45 minutes through the words of Thornton Wilder. As part of our youth component, we brought together two schools that were at opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to wealth and resources, location and population, from the south end’s Cleveland High School and north end’s Roosevelt High School. They call themselves the Rough Eagles (a combination of their school mascots); working with our staff and artists, they created a multimedia response to Our Town that combined video footage and original, often deeply personal writing to explore the play’s themes of daily life, love, relationships and death as they relate to their own high school experiences. We also began working with our Core Audience, making connections between arts participation and civic engagement—something we were inspired to do by Anna’s work at the Institute. (Anyone interested in learning more about the entire project can contact stephanie@intiman.org for a Casebook on Our Town and all the events of the first year of The American Cycle.) In the largest possible sense, what we did was begin a long-term conversation with our artists, our audience and our community through which we will explore—through art, civic dialogue and collaborative partnerships—what it means to be an American.

Who influenced you as a theater manager?

Catherine Irwin, who is now at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, at Living Stage—she was the most amazing, intuitive manager I’ve ever seen. She taught me to trust my intuition. The great Zelda Fichandler at Arena Stage, who instilled a sense of never being satisfied, always working to make it better. Ben Moore at Seattle Rep, who taught me the business of the business. And lighting designer Allen Lee Hughes, who from the time I was selling tickets believed in me, and believed that there was a place for me in this industry.

Can you see another theater movement emerging the way reps emerged in the 50's and sixties?

I want to see it. But do I see it? I’m not sure. What it really takes for movement building is for seemingly disparate interests to agree on a general direction, a goal. Within it, there can be many different ways to get there. I look at the environmental movement—they’ve been very smart, harnessed their collective energy. I’m not sure that we’re doing it in the arts, and we need to.

If you started a new arts movement what would be its mission and what would be its theme song or anthem? Who would be its resident poet?

The resident poet is easy to answer—I would say Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who is a poet, short story writer, novelist, screenwriter, stand-up comic and an artist of infinite range and possibility. www.shermanalexie.com Its anthem would be Maya Angelou’s 1993 Inaugural Poem for President Bill Clinton. http://eserver.org/poetry/angelou.html. Its mission would be re-establishing the theatre as a central forum for expression (the artist) and exchange (the artist and the audience).

If you could do a piece for the current White House, what would it be?

I would have us re-stage INTIMAN’s 2002 adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s magnificent Nickel and Dimed, which we commissioned from Joan Holden and which Bart Sher directed, and I would host a panel of citizens who helped us explore and investigate such issues as living wages, housing costs, childcare, health insurance, housing and transportation, and the impact they have on the lives of the working poor and the middle and upper-middle classes. Or INTIMAN would adapt Caroline Kennedy’s The Patriot’s Handbook for the stage, with Bart directing, featuring artists and community leaders like government officials and school officials) reading different sections, with music composed by Adam Guettel. Patriotism means a lot of different things—the book covers everyone from Ben Franklin to Bruce Springsteen. It’s like the environmental movements—there are a lot of different voices reaching for a common goal.

What is the most important duty of an artist?

If artists live in the world and follow their passions, they will fulfill their most important duty—to be responsible citizens.

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