From the Executive Director

Leaning Forward

By Gigi Bolt

Later this month, TCG and its member theatres will enter a new era. With its 50th anniversary just over the horizon, our national not-for-profit theatre is poised to welcome Teresa Eyring as TCG's next executive director. Teresa brings to the position the vision of a new generation of leadership, a depth of national experience at five of our most respected theatres, and the deep respect of all who have worked with her. She will follow in the footsteps of prior directors of TCG who have been instrumental in building, sustaining and inspiring the field. As longtime executive director Peter Zeisler once wrote, "Leadership—particularly related to the arts and humanities—requires risk-taking…the marketplace is re-active but leadership is pro-active." Teresa brings those qualities and more to her new role. Over the coming decade, TCG will seek to strengthen the role of not-for-profit theatre so that its artists and institutions can fully engage the central questions of our times. TCG's board and staff look forward with great anticipation to her arrival and to the challenges ahead.

A time of transition and change is fundamentally invigorating. For theatres across the country this moment holds within it new promise and possibilities. And it brings us around to remembering and contemplating why we embarked on the ever quixotic but oh-so-essential task of making theatre in America today. Perhaps it's just me, but I find myself thinking of the words of others who have managed to capture some of the mystery and magic of the pursuit. I offer just a few:

Jeanette Winterson: "We sense there is more to life than the material world can provide, and art is a clue, an intimation, at its best a transformation." [read more]

Oskar Eustis: "Democracy and the theatre were invented in the same city in the same decade. It can't be a coincidence." [read more]

Ben Cameron: "All vibrant theatres begin with a dream. They begin with a dream that can be realized only, though, when other people hear that dream, come together, rally to it, conspire—conspire from the true Latin sense of 'to breathe together'—to make the dream a reality." [read more]

Kirk Varnedoe: "Because art goes faster than we do, it causes us to engage in a different rhythm and intensity with outside forces."

Peter Zeisler: "The role of theatre throughout time has been to prod, provoke and invite debate, and artists serve as our guides through the wilderness."

Anne Bogart: "I want to be responsible for and answerable to my role in society, the role my theatre plays in my town, the role it plays in my country."

Todd London: "The excitement of the theatre is the individual voice."

Lloyd Richards: "We must take steps to unleash the creative energy and courage from which the nonprofit theatre grew in the first place, and that still exists today."

As our national not-for-profit field begins to imagine its second half-century, we know that our greatest strength is each other. Our individual creativity and potential is leveraged by the work of so many others. The word "field" for me has always carried the meaning and resonance of a great shared purpose. It encompasses a mutual understanding, not to be taken for granted, that celebrates each other, values each individual dream and knows that the reflection of the human spirit found on our stages transforms lives and, by extension, the world.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested that "we live our lives as a poem, active in its own making, aware of the power of image and word, symbol and metaphor, cognizant of its transcendent meaning as our life unfolds." For me much of that poem reflects all of you whose work has shaped and vastly enriched my life. Mine is a choral poem. Parts have been assigned, but it is the whole that counts.

It's been an honor and great joy to serve over these months as TCG's interim executive director. Working with TCG's distinguished board of directors has been a singular pleasure. And I want to convey my particular thanks and complete respect to its remarkable, gifted and dedicated staff members who together have made this experience one I will always treasure. I look forward to assisting Teresa during a spring transition period, and I want to thank her—for stepping forward and saying yes to TCG's invitation to lead us to the future.

In 2004, German archeologists revealed the discovery of a 35,000-year-old flute carved from the tusk of a now-extinct woolly mammoth, confirmation that the impulse toward art is part of our biological makeup. The prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings in France are not only stunning in their artistry, they are remarkable in that the artists represented not themselves but the world around them, the animals and the environment in which they lived. In that same way, I hope that going forward our theatre will continue to produce work that will signal across cultures that we need to ever more fully embrace the larger world.

My profound thanks for your friendship, your dedication and your work. See you again soon. And in this moment rich in possibility, here's to Teresa, to the future and to you!