As I write, I am but a few weeks into my new job as Artistic Director at American Conservatory Theater. No more “designate” after the title. It is on me to see that the season that I planned over the last few months is now produced. I am particularly excited about the unique perspective and opportunity afforded me to host artists, including fellow SDC Members, and to make sure that they can work to the best of their imaginative capabilities.
Even with all the theatres in the country, it’s a relative few of us who have this privilege. Not only thinking about work for the stage in terms of what I would like to direct and build through rehearsal and conversation, but also watching different directors this season work with their creative teams, and how that alchemy interacts with our audiences, will be a truly thrilling experience. This first season is something of a test balloon that will help inform how the organization moves forward.
Each day here, I am reminded of why it is so essential that artists belong in the leadership roles at our theatres. These institutions are in the business of making art; who better than artists to lead them? Even those, like myself, who have never run an organization before can understand beyond the walls of casting rooms and rehearsal halls and stages. We constantly balance the needs of an entire production with the needs and talents of those who we have assembled to create it. We must think on our feet, be awake at every moment, while also considering the long-term effects of each decision, holding in mind at every turn the long-term goal-namely a successfully staged show-with the immediate and countless details that will create the groundwork for its success. Directors and choreographers are leaders with vision. I am happy to be a working director at A.C.T. and a guest artist at other theatres too, but also now with the great responsibility of an institution to shepherd, value, and grow. I take this new job very seriously.
It is,_not lost on me that my new artistic home exists not far from the fabled Silicon Valley, where the technologies that have shaped the last four decades of American life were born. I am all too aware how the work done nearby has allowed technology to creep ever further into our lives and into our entertainment. The phones we carry have more computer power in them than the computers that landed men on the moon.
But as awe-inspiring as those tech achievements may be, they were only possible because of teams of talented, creative, and imaginative people who joined together in a common pursuit. That is the same job with which we’re tasked with each and every production, and even if our work individually doesn’t have the same global reach of a new app, we unite people in common goals, whether we’re working- out an intricate dance or illuminating a single moment of beauty for 99 or 1,040–the seating size of the A.C.T.’s Geary Theater-souls gathered together to share something real rather than virtual.
This issue highlights some tools and the thinking behind technology’s use. But in our field, we must remember that the tools are secondary to story and equipment secondary to people. That’s why, even as I take on an enormous new challenge in my own career, I remain utterly committed to working on your behalf as President of SDC, because we make the product that speaks to me and to all of us most deeply: theatre.
In Solidarity,
Pam MacKinnon
Executive Board President