Theaterweek	Time for Gaffney by Anthony Chase

In recent years, the Studio Arena Theatre board of directors has developed a reputation for being slow and indecisive. They blew that idea out of the water last week when they abruptly announced that Executive Director Ken Neufeld would be stepping down and Kathleen Gaffney was being elevated to chief executive officer effective immediately.

The official announcement emphasized the canonization of Gaffney rather than the jettisoning of Neufeld, stating that the organizational change marked “a return to original unified leadership model,” whereby Neal Du Brock led the institution from 1963 to 1980 as its executive producer. Indeed the theater has taken great pains to compare Gaffney to the best of Du Brock in every way, hoping to inspire the same sense of theatrical excitement for which their founding artistic director was known.

Times, of course, have changed since the days of Neal Du Brock, and those with an eye to history should be mindful that the single leader model was developed at a time when the regional theater movement was on the ascent and it looked as if the golden goose of government support would never fail to provide. In that expansionist and confident historical moment, theaters built high-maintenance facilities intended for growing audiences, lavish subsidies and low ticket prices.

Then, the 1970s happened and the bubble burst. Prices went up as subsidies went down. Theater boards of directors were alarmed by a rising tide of red ink, and producing artistic directors, unaccustomed to the word “no,” were told to rein themselves in. Du Brock himself was an early casualty of the changing landscape. As executive producer, he commanded the institution as a virtual artistic and administrative Napoleon right up until the board, fed up with his alcoholic antics, piques of temper and especially his spendthrift ways, gave him the heave-ho.

To address the issue of artistic quality and financial stability, theater boards across the country brought in managing directors to serve as equal partners with their artistic directors, including at Studio Arena Theatre. It was a problematic relationship from the very beginning.

Often, rather than symbiotic, the relationship between artistic and managing directors has been competitive. On the one hand, artistic directors were often relieved to be free from the burden of business dealings. On the other hand, they often fell victim to managing directors who saw themselves as money police and suspected anything artistically daring of being a potential money pit. Theatrical offerings became more and more diluted. The most energetic theatrical debate of this era was whether or not actors should be allowed to utter one particular four-letter word. Productions of the classics became rare; one-person shows, three-character shows and co-productions of mediocre scripts became standard cost-saving measures.

As founding boards of directors from the late 1950s and early 1960s retired, they were replaced in the 1970s and 1980s by corporate appointees, that is to say representatives of prominent businesses in the community, typically from the second level of management. Such boards tended to lack artistic passion, or even the power to get things done. They often felt alienated from the entire artistic process, but could find an ally in the managing director—someone who spoke their language. Artistically, the equation could be death. The vision of the artistic director was routinely eclipsed by the managing director who, in most cases, could circumvent the artistic director and appeal directly to the board of directors to get his way.

Have you ever noticed the two welcome letters printed in program for each show at Studio Arena Theatre? One is from the artistic director; the other is from the executive director. Why would the business manager need to write us a letter? This is not a theatrical model; it is a corporate model. And it is a phenomenon of the second-generation regional theater. In their effort to become financially more responsible, many regional theaters refocused in this manner, and in so doing, some lost sight of their original artistic missions almost entirely.

Adrian Hall, founding artistic director of Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island was fired in the mid 1970s by a board that was unhappy with his confrontational and sometimes ribald work. He managed to replace key board members and get himself hired back, winning a special Tony Award in 1981. Josephine R. Abady found herself at war with the board of directors at the Cleveland Play House, which seemed to question her every artistic choice in the early 1990s, and was fired. She reemerged as artistic director of Circle in the Square in New York City.

Abady once said, “The board is entirely focused on the financial bottom line, and I respect that. But I do wish they understood that it is my job to watch the artistic bottom line, and we’ve dipped way below the minimum level of acceptability in that area.”

David Frank, Studio Arena’s artistic director from 1980 until 1992, referred disparagingly to “the year of Greater Tuna,” or the 1985-1986 season in which the board and managing director insisted that he produce a popular two-hander by that title, despite the fact that he, personally, found the play to be loathsome and inane. He considered the move to be both a financially motivated commercial maneuver and punishment for the money he had spent on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and Athol Fugard the year before.

Kathleen Gaffney officially succeeded Gavin Cameron-Webb as artistic director in April of this year. In her newly announced role as chief executive officer she “will be responsible for overseeing the theater’s artistic, business, educational and fundraising operations.” Clearly, the board does not want to see Gaffney’s vision hampered in any way—including by an overly cautious managing partner. We’ve upped the ante. What happens now is between Gaffney and her audience; and between Gaffney and her board.

In its official statement, the board “expressed its thanks for Neufeld’s dedication and hard work, especially in the wake of Cameron-Webb’s retirement and the transition to Gaffney’s leadership.”

Neufeld’s own official comment was: “Leading Studio Arena Theatre for the past seven years has been a very rewarding experience. I have learned a lot, I have built rich friendships with trustees, staff members, supporters, and audience members, and I have exceeded significant personal and professional goals. In the past year and a half I have worked to ready Studio Arena for the next phase of its organizational history and with a newly energized Trustee group and the arrival of Artistic Director Kathleen Gaffney, I feel that I am now ready to make this decision and will begin to seek new challenges and opportunities. I wish Kathleen and everyone at Studio Arena nothing but the best in the future.”

Dignified to the last, Neufeld leaves the institution well-liked and with a reputation for impeccable integrity. He navigated the role of managing partner with far more grace than many others. One well-wisher quipped that Neufeld was the only executive director to leave Studio Arena Theatre in recent memory without fear of indictment—a wry reference to the shadows that fell over some of his predecessors, and a compliment to Neufeld’s own high moral standards.

He was, however, a status quo managing director, and Studio Arena is now clearly going in another direction. As one board member confided, “It was time. That’s all. It was just time!”

It is possible that a pivotal moment for Studio Arena’s former management model occurred when the Erie County Cultural Resources Advisory Board cut the institution’s funding to zero last year, reducing the cultural Big Six of Erie County to only five by dropping Studio Arena off the list entirely. In explaining the decision, Robert B. Skerker, chairman of the ECCRAB board at the time said that Studio Arena had abandoned its role as a nationally recognized theater in favor of stable audience development. Skerker was not reticent about the fact that he found his conversations with Neufeld to be frustrating to the point of being maddening as the Studio Arena executive director insisted that raising artistic standards would be impossible given the economic climate. Finally, Skerker decided that the county should not reinvest $300,000 a year in artistic mediocrity. For the cultural board, the bottom line was artistic, not financial.

In Artvoice, I wrote, “The writing on the wall would indicate that Studio Arena is a theater that does not have the support of local government and where the real power is in the hands of the managing director, not the artistic director.”

Not any more.

Reached by telephone, Neufeld reiterated the points in his published statement, adding that he had enjoyed his time at Studio Arena but was ready to move on. Gaffney wished to stress that she and Neufeld had enjoyed a warm relationship over the past half year, and confided her wish that he might have stayed for an additional year, allowing her to get her feet wet.

“I expect that I will have some sort of managing director within the year,” said Gaffney. As she has been made the chief executive officer, we can anticipate that this person will not be a “managing partner,” but an employee charged to help the theater realize Gaffney’s vision.

Gaffney has now inherited the challenge to create an artistically energized theater within the limitations of financial responsibility. The artistic director at Studio Arena Theatre will no longer have to compromise her vision to please a managing partner, but in realizing that vision, she will be responsible for the financial bottom line.

While a great deal rests on her shoulders, we can anticipate that Gaffney will be allowed some latitude. At some theaters, audiences have been known to shrink as commercial product is replaced with more artistically challenging product. We can expect that not everything she tries will work and that the board may get nervous when it doesn’t. The board, for now, does seem to be ready to take some chances. They are investing a great deal of trust in this largely unknown but undeniably dynamic person, and they seem to be telling us, “It’s time. It’s just time.”