This was a huge step for me. I could not and would not give up my roles as actress and director. I knew the job of artistic director was demanding because I’d been doing that already for almost ten years. In that position I was responsible for selecting the season’s plays, putting together the team—director, designer, and actors—for each play, and choosing the special programs we’d put on outside of the season’s roster that were part of our community outreach efforts. In addition to all the hiring and firing of directors, designers, and actors, I was responsible for stage management and for all set, costume, and building crews. I had support staff of about twenty or twenty-five people. Adding the role of producing artistic director to that seemed overwhelming. I didn’t think I could do it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It meant an intense and ongoing involvement with the board of directors, constant efforts to raise money, daily interaction with marketing and publicity, and creating budgets.
I came very close to turning the job down, but before I did, I met with the department heads and told them how I felt. Then I asked them if they thought I could do it. By the end of the meeting, we figured out a way to structure the new arrangement. It meant changes for everybody—they all had to take on more responsibilities and work very closely with one another. There was no more “we” and “they.”
I went home and, still undecided, told everything to Louie. He said, “What the hell—give it a shot.” The next day I accepted the job that consumed most of my time and energy for the several years leading up to the Oscar, and for several years after that.
The first major decision I made as producing artistic director was to rethink how the company was organized and begin a major restructuring of the business offices. This reorganization was prompted by my inheriting, from the outgoing managing director, a whopping deficit of three hundred thousand dollars, and discovering that our balance sheet was in far worse shape than any of us had known. I had to act quickly to turn things around. I hired a consultant to come in and help me analyze the effectiveness of the existing structure of the theater. We quickly realized that the theater would benefit by being run quite differently than it had been, and so I reorganized the management and created a more team-oriented, democratic organization that gave people a chance to identify problems—working in pairs or small groups to think through solutions for those problems, and then presenting those ideas to the rest of us in a more relaxed and open environment. This would cut down on how much time people had to spend building a consensus every time an issue arose; it would help all of us to think and act more decisively and reduce the amount of paperwork and time it took to communicate with each other. Most importantly, it would generate an atmosphere that encouraged more risk-taking where there was far less of a threat of reprisal if an idea didn’t work. It fostered a kind of entrepreneurial way of thinking that really seemed to reinvigorate all of us.
By early 1990 we were finally in full gear: our subscription base was at an all-time high; we were in the midst of our most ambitious fund-raising drive ever and had already raised $1.25 million toward a goal of $2 million—which would then be met by a matching grant from the state of New Jersey. But then misfortune struck: our chief fund-raiser and a member of the board of directors suffered a heart attack and had to withdraw from his duties. We were in the middle of our most ambitious fund-raising drive ever, left without the person who had been most involved.
We were blindsided again when we lost three sources of funding at once—federal, state, and corporate. These sources simply fell away, due in part to a weak national economy and new federal and state budget constraints, but more directly as a result of a terrible domino effect that started with a “scandal” involving the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). When a small group of artists that included Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer known for his bold photographs that shocked and disturbed conservatives, were denied NEA fellowships that year, they protested and started a controversy that pitted the NEA against the conservative senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, who no one has ever mistaken for a lover of experimental art. He had made cutting federal funding of the arts his personal crusade, and the Mapplethorpe scandal was perfect timing for him, but deadly timing for us.
We were just then involved in our own mini-scandal, having recently mounted a production that caused a controversy, even in our part of the world. It was a play called Spare Parts, very funny and moving, about two lesbians who talk a male friend of theirs into helping them have a baby. I remember well the discussions we’d have on how to market and publicize this show, and I found myself vetoing all of the well-intentioned suggestions for marketing the play in a way that would not cause our subscribers any discomfort. I just wasn’t comfortable with euphemisms like “It’s about a new kind of nuclear family”: if our patrons didn’t know up front that they’d be coming to see two lesbians figuring out how to get their hands on some sperm, I didn’t want them to find out once they were comfortable in their prepaid subscription seats.
Then the state of New Jersey, like just about every other state in the union, was hit by the fallout from the NEA controversy and cut their arts grants budget. It was as if we had, after two decades of holding our seawall, been hit by a perfect storm that we just never saw coming.
When we lost our grant money, the board immediately asked me to slash the next year’s budget in any way that I could. I reduced our rehearsal time from four weeks to three weeks (I knew I could count on our professional crew to get the work done), but that wasn’t enough. They wanted me to cut the salaries of all the staff who were already working ten hours a day. Even worse, the board wanted me to systematically let go the most senior, and therefore best compensated, members of the core staff in order to bring in entry-level people, at much lower salaries, to fill these posts. This is something that I simply would not do. These were the people with whom I’d worked closely for many years, and for the last four years they had supported me in my dual role as producing artistic director. I couldn’t have done that job without them. It was because of their encouragement and hard work that I had been as successful as I was, and I just couldn’t do what the board wanted me to. I suggested they bring in someone to replace me.
By this time, the board members, who had always supported me as well, were totally dispirited. The theater was carrying a deficit from previous years and now we’d lost three major funding sources. The board refused to replace me; they said it was either fire staff or close the theater. When they told me that, I just said, “Well, close the doors.”
After almost twenty years, the end came swift and sure. Just like that, the Whole Theatre Company was gone.
Three short years earlier, when I came back to Montclair from L.A. after the Oscars, the main street leading up to the theater had been jammed with traffic and supporters. Now, though northern New Jersey had benefited so much from our presence, and for such a long time, the community around us fell oddly silent. In the end, this was just another piece of that damn storm that made the whole end so final and so terribly inevitable. So many good people would be out of work! I was luckier than most of the staff and crew; in the last couple of years, thanks to my higher profile, I had been turning down work for the first time in my life. I knew that my family would be okay. But I knew that some other people would not be. I wrote glowing letters of recommendation for anyone who requested one and I passed along any job leads that I could, but this didn’t manage to assuage my feelings of failure—there should have been something I could have done to avoid this ending and save the company.
In April 1990, for the first time in the twenty years since Louie and I had left New York City, I woke up in the morning with nowhere to go, no one to see, and no deadline to meet.
For all that time, I had been at the theater and in my office by nine A.M. I spent my days managing a staff of dozens; making endless fund-raising phone calls; meeting with this or that board member, actor, designer, or director; or rehearsing my part in our next production.
For the first day in a long time, my calendar—my life—was wide open.
I found I had time to have breakfast at home—not on the run. I could sit at the kitchen table and read the newspaper; I even had the time to do the crossword puzzle. But I lived with a world-class puzzler who insisted my inability to spell meant I should keep my hands off his puzzle (not to mention his special pencils).
After about a week of this leisure time, I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking around, and realized that the house, though clean, had been neglected. Things that needed repairs had gone unnoticed. Doorknobs wiggled, hinges groaned, three-way lightbulbs were now only one-way in the too few lamps in the house. I didn’t have a full set of anything—silverware, glasses, dishes, pots and pans. I took a tentative step toward the dining room, then stopped myself when I realized that I kept referring to this room as the dining room, even though it had been my mother’s bedroom for several years. I felt like Rip Van Winkle waking from a long sleep—or, in my case, what was more like an endless all-nighter. Looking around me now, I determined to take an inventory of the entire house. I began to make a list of everything that needed to be either replaced or repaired: I took note of the cracked or mismatched dishes, every creaky latch and door that I had been silently complaining about for years, and every lousy throw rug that was still underfoot but that I’d been swearing for years I would someday burn.
Then I called Bonnie Low-Kramen, who had been the publicity manager at the theater. She’d been the one to persuade me to have Entertainment Tonight over for breakfast before the Oscar nominations were announced. In the couple of years since the Oscars, she had taken on a great deal of responsibility as her organizational and business skills had blossomed.
She had helped me pack my desk, just days before, and as I was loading my belongings into the trunk of my car, she’d hugged me and said, “You need me. So call when you’re ready.” For two years, Bonnie had been handling my schedule, my calls, and all of the mail that had come for me at the theater. I really had no idea how much work she did solely on my behalf there, but I knew it was essential. Now I found myself thinking about our last conversation; I picked up the phone. Bonnie, like the rest of us, had been unemployed now for a week. The phone rang twice before I heard her cheerful hello.
“Olympia! Enjoying your break?” she asked.
“I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is exactly the word,” I replied. “What about you?”
“Aside from looking for work in this dismal economy and applying for unemployment, I’m fantastic. What’s up?”
And then I just blurted it out.
“You were right. I need your help,” I said.
Without missing a beat she replied, “Okay. Let me just pull a few things together and I’ll come over.”
Just like that, and without knowing exactly what I was doing, I unofficially opened and incorporated Olympia Inc.
When I look back on this time now, I realize that bringing the business skills I’d developed at the Whole Theatre closer to home and into my nonprofessional life was something I could—and should—do. It was finally time to focus on my own career with the same kind of professional attention and care as I had the running of the theater.
After almost twenty years of dealing with the rigors of keeping a not-for-profit organization afloat—especially after the last handful of years as producing artistic director—maybe I had matured enough and learned enough to make my own work my number-one priority and put myself and my career first. I was now stepping forward to focus on my own life. I was excited by this, and also terrified. It meant that I wouldn’t have any excuses to fall back on if I didn’t show up. If I didn’t give myself the kind of care and attention I needed.
Taking this step meant that I deserved to take myself—and my life—seriously. I’d always taken my work very seriously from an artistic point of view, but now, thanks to my experience in running the Whole Theatre, and thanks to the kind of acknowledgment I got from winning the Oscar, I felt more confident to put myself forward and ask for certain considerations, reach out for certain parts, and even to make demands that a few years earlier I would have been too intimidated to make.
One of the skills I’d learned running the theater was how to be a good negotiator. I still left the actual deal making up to my agents, but I now had a lot to say. I knew what I wanted—a flexible schedule that left time for me to spend with my family, more money, better accommodations—whatever it was that was on the negotiating table, I had an opinion. My longtime agent, friend, and now manager, Gene Parsagian let me have my say. But there was more to this Olympia Inc. business than just the negotiations I found myself in. I had to look at my career as a whole, rather than in parts.
The first thing to decide was where to put the office, what we laughingly referred to as our “national headquarters.” Peter, my middle child, was living back at home while he finished college. He had moved up to the third floor. Christina—my eldest—was now living in New York, and we used her bedroom as a guest room when she wasn’t home visiting. Stefan had moved into Peter’s old room, where he stayed when he was home from college, leaving his old room empty. That, I realized, would make the perfect spot. We purchased all of the basic office equipment. We had two desks, a phone with two lines, a computer, copy machine, and fax—all our toys were in place. We made a list of priorities. First up? Louie and I had been putting it all together on gut and need, on a month-to-month or, more often, day-to-day basis. At the time, it was the only way to do it, but now, I realized, it was time to rethink the way I ran my own business—the business of Olympia Inc.; I had to create a means of tracking money that came in or went out of “the business.” This meant designing financial statements and flow charts and learning to look as closely at my own bottom line as we once had the theater’s.
Next we decided to tackle the house. We made a list of everything that positively had to go and a list of everything we needed. Not only did I have the time to look around and see what was needed, I actually had the cash in my pocket to get it fixed or replaced. We went into a combination feng shui–shopping frenzy over the next several weeks and spent a lot of time in the local mall, in which I hadn’t set foot for about fifteen years. I couldn’t believe the size—and the din.
With Bonnie navigating our way around all this commerce, we bought lamps, rugs, mirrors, desks, silverware, and new pots and pans. It felt good to finally be able to dress up our old 1890s Georgian-style house and make it feel like a place where you wanted to put up your feet and stay awhile, and not, as my daughter, Christina, liked to describe it, like a Greyhound bus station. It felt good to finally be able to stop running long enough to actually let myself feel at home.
Amid all the excitement of putting my new game plan into action, the closing of the theater remained a complicated thing for me. On the one hand, it was difficult to have to give up the day-to-day friendship and fellowship I had enjoyed with the staff. It was especially hard to say good-bye to Rosemary Iverson and Warren Ross, two board members who had both been such good and patient mentors to me. Warren was the president of an insurance company in town, and I used to go to his office whenever I needed to speak to him. Instead of picking up the phone or making an appointment, I’d just show up, at the back of the building where he worked and where his office was located. I’d stand on the small patio and Warren would always step out and talk to me as if nothing were more important than the crisis I was then facing. I remember we would take long walks around the park together, and he would coach me on how to approach problems strategically and how to work with various personalities on the board.
Rosemary was just as important a friend. During the time she was president of the board, the theater had been in one of its ongoing spots of financial trouble, so I called her up and told her what a precarious place the theater was in. After listening attentively, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “Well, maybe there’ll be a miracle!” Three days later a large check came in from one of o
ur longtime benefactors in support of our educational outreach program. Apparently our conversation had gone straight from Rosemary’s lips to God’s ears! This money kept us going for awhile, but in the end, of course, it wasn’t enough to save us. Her advocacy of the theater helped sustain my efforts for years. I still miss working with her, but she remains one of my closest friends.
It is only now that I can see that the closing of the theater was more than just the ending of this part of my professional life. It was also the end of a dream, a desire for a community. The Whole Theatre was not only a successful artistic endeavor, it had become an important part of all the northern New Jersey communities we served. One of the things we were proudest of was our educational program, inspired by the Living Stage in Washington, D.C. We had started a second company at the theater called the Thunder and the Light, which worked with various populations in schools and institutions. Using theater and acting techniques, students were deepening their feelings of self-esteem, directly affecting their reading, language, and math skills. It was hard to see that program come to an end.
Ask Me Again Tomorrow Page 4