Where do I find inspiration?

I continue to find the context within which we are doing our work to be challenging. While that has always been true, I don’t know that there are many who would disagree with me when I say that this moment—this time—feels different. The work we do requires us to see around the corners. The third move is as critical as the first. Of course, no plan survives first contact, so agility also matters. One step at a time.

In this moment, at this time, where do I find inspiration? Quite simply, in the pages of each issue of SDC Journal. As I read each issue, from the first draft to the final proof on its way to print, I find inspiration in your work and all the ways in which it is manifest. In the voices of the Membership. In your commitment to the rooms where you create. As I see you move through challenges—one after another—and resolve them. While I know all collaborations are not the same, reading through this issue underscores for me that very different approaches to collaboration lead to successful work.

I am inspired by Lisa Peterson’s collaboration with composer and sound designer Mark Bennett. The way Lisa gives space to her longtime collaborator, as I know she does with many others, is a lesson in trust and what is possible when you surround yourself with the best. I am also a bit melancholy when I read about the early days of their work together. Lisa and Mark strengthened their collaboration by spending days together—with the full design team—in rooms at theatres across the country, playing with ideas before preliminary designs were due. Think of that. That was a time before videotapes of final run-throughs were allowed, before low-functioning Skype was overtaken by Zoom, and before the infrastructure of the industry became severely stressed.

In 2023, I read a piece in The Guardian in which Nicholas Hytner asked big questions about government subsidies for arts and culture. Boldly and with precision, he deliberately and pointedly encouraged a conversation. As he would say, it was a provocation. Where I sat in midtown New York, it spurred discourse. Inspired by his institutional leadership, his influence in cultural policy spaces, and his extraordinary body of work, we talked following the opening of this season’s Giant on Broadway. Among the many things that have stayed with me—and which seems to me to be very necessary right now if we are to emerge from this moment politically, socially, and culturally—is his view that answers may lie in compromise.

Agility is a theme in Lauryn Johnson’s interview with Baayork Lee and Eddie Gutiérrez about their restaging work on A Chorus Line. They must be agile to balance the legacy of Michael Bennett’s original intention with the adaptation necessary to help the show succeed in new spaces with new performers. Their ongoing collaboration—with each other and with the international A Chorus Line family—reminds me of the rewards of playing the long game.

Azar Kazemi candidly shares her experiences making work today as an Iranian American, directing Sanaz Toossi’s plays Wish You Were Here and English, the latter of which was in rehearsal in February 2026 as the United States attacked Iran. A growing body of work by Middle Eastern writers has offered a new generation of directors opportunities to tell their stories, stories that take an even deeper resonance right now.

A huge swath of the DC population rotates every four to eight years, making it the most heavily transient city in the country. The influx and exodus of government workers runs parallel to a foundation of citizens who call DC home, many for generations. I am excited about how Ashleigh King, as an artist born and raised in DC, considers the intersection of the power of culture and the power of policymakers.

I am reminded that our Members regularly use the limitations they’re presented with to their creative advantage. Laura Alcalá Baker exemplifies this in her interview about the joys and challenges of moving her production of Gloria Calderón Kellett’s play One of the Good Ones from the mainstage of Kansas City Repertory Theatre to community spaces across Kansas City.

Anne Kauffman’s conversation with Marshall W. Mason made me feel like I was eavesdropping. The depth and specificity with which Anne mines Marshall’s process and pedagogy is a master class. Of course, Marshall is one of the greatest. An exquisite artist and teacher who contributed so much to the craft and practice of theatre, all while serving SDC and the Membership, including as Union President.

Which leads me back to SDC. The inspiration I get from the Journal stories of Members working, facing challenges, solving problems, and deepening their craft helps inspire me as I engage in the decision-making necessary for the Union to be able to further your strength as artists and leaders, in the room and in the field.

In Solidarity,

Laura Penn

Executive Director