Next Steps: The New Kid on CTG’s White Paper

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” – Peter Drucker

In December 2011, I received a copy of Center Theatre Group’s white paper on professional training programs for emerging theatre artists.

Here are possible reasons why they mailed me the report:

• I serve on the National Emerging Leaders Council and have been a core member of Emerging Arts Leaders/LA since 2005; 
• I am an alumnus of the Los Angeles County Arts Internship Program, have been a supervisor through the program six times and a Learning Community Hub leader twice; 
• I still act as volunteer staff for the organization where I interned in 2004, Circle X Theatre Co., a small theatre company similar to many profiled in the white paper as potential intern placement organizations; 
• I am an alumnus of Claremont Graduate University’s Arts Management program, whose students and faculty participated in the research process. 

It was like someone sent me a research paper about my life. Paging through the report, I saw familiar faces and quotations from friends. More importantly, I saw my career path reflected in the data and recommendations.

Four months later, I joined Center Theatre Group as the Educational Programs Manager, focused on the training, support and development of emerging, young artists and arts professionals. It is a distinct honor to build on the work done by Patricia and Leslie to provide professional training programs for Los Angeles’ next generation of theatre leaders.

Substantive, hands-on experience within a theatre company—large or small— provides theatre management students with a chance to take their knowledge from “page to stage.”

Working for a theatre company while pursuing my Masters allowed me to take what I learned on Monday and apply it to the real world on Tuesday… and then ask why it didn’t work on Wednesday.

Peter Drucker would be proud: CTG has already begun the “hard work” of implementing aspects of the white paper. This spring, two students from local arts management programs became the organization’s pilot class of Graduate Scholars.

In the program evaluation they created for CTG, Jessie Randall from CSU Long Beach’s Theatre Management program and Julia Baumgartener from CGU’s Arts Management program corroborated many of the ideas presented in the white paper:  

Nearly all the hypotheses presented are extremely accurate representations of the professional and curricular needs of graduate students in arts/theatre management […] The ideal internship would establish mutual benefit for the organization and the interns, so it is valuable to examine the two groups’ diverse needs – where they align and where they diverge.

Jessie and Julia’s recommendations included implementing a competitive application process, focusing on project-based learning opportunities, and integrating graduate scholars within their departments (literally and metaphorically, as a shortage of desk space often leaves our interns in odd locations). We’re taking their suggestions and looking ahead to future classes of Graduate Scholars.

Center Theatre Group will continue to use the data gathered through the MetLife/TCG Ah-Ha! Program to shape our professional training programs.

Thank you for the chance to think, to learn, and to grow. Now we’re rolling up our sleeves. Let the hard work begin!

Camille Schenkkan is the Educational Programs Manager at Center Theatre Group.  Email her at cschenkkan@CenterTheatreGroup.org. 

For more information about Center Theatre Group's Ah-Ha! research into what theatres can do to bridge school and work, please click here.

Finished Product

We here at Center Theatre Group (CTG) have finally reached an end to our year long journey of our research exploring internship placements for graduate arts management students in local Los Angeles theatres. In reality, however, we feel our work is never done! We have learned so much and plan to launch an expanded internship program here at CTG that will include a new opportunity targeting graduate students based on this research-the CTG Scholars Program.

Please visit our webpage here to download our white paper and feel free to post any feedback here on the blog!

A special thanks to Theatre Communications Group and MetLife for giving us the opportunity to "think."

Leslie K. Johnson
Director of Education and Community Partnerships

Patricia Garza
Senior Manager for Education and Community Partnerships

Listening to the Field

To complete our research on the need and viability for a graduate theatre management program, we spent time talking with local theatres about what they need or want from an intern. With the help of L.A. Stage Alliance, we structured two focus groups of Los Angeles Theatre leaders to gain perspectives from a range of opportunities and experiences. The first afternoon was spent with 8 smaller sized ensemble based theatre companies and the second group of 9 was mostly mid-sized theatres.

Here are some highlights:
• Match Passion to Passion: Most organizations feel very adamant that they want interns who are excited and passionate about that particular organization’s mission and work. If a student is more interested in large presenting organizations, it may not be the best fit for them to intern with a smaller ensemble based theatre. The staffs in these theatres typically have been there since the inception of the company and have extreme pride for their work. They were clear in wanting an intern that is going to match their enthusiasm.
• Recruitment is a Time Suck: Our theatre colleagues agreed that searching for qualified interns is an endless challenge. It takes a lot of time and energy to locate viable intern candidates and the majority of the theatres would like more help in this regard.
• Best Learning Opportunities Happen During the Season: Not only is summer too short, but most of the "juicy" projects that interns crave fall during the season. (There was a suggestion that maybe summer could serve as a training period and then the student could fully immerse themselves into the real work when the season begins.) The amount of time that it takes to train and invest in an intern is significant, and if these students want a deep, rich experience they also need to invest the time in getting oriented, and being available and flexible with their schedules.
• Is it an Internship We are Talking About?: The term “internship” came up for debate in both groups. Some argued that students may want more of an "observership" so they can learn and be in the room for lots of various discussions. Some argued that placements would be more of a peer to peer collaboration, especially at the graduate level.
• Pass the Cream, Please: Organizations agreed that we want the cream of the crop of emerging professionals to join our working ranks. We want the best of the best students who are committed to our art form and our city. Many of these organizations are short staffed and need people that are going to actually provide quality help to them. In return, the intern will get real life experience that they can apply to future job offerings or maybe even turn into a job offer there at that particular organization.
• Ask Not What Theatre Can Do for You...: Theatres want to see tangible results. If they trust interns with vital work for the organization to thrive then the product needs to be useful and viable for that organization to implement.
• Connect Theatre Classroom with Theatre Community: Perhaps most importantly, the theatre professionals in our focus groups want interns to see theatre and expose themselves to the art that their management deals with on a day to day basis. Get in the field! They lamented that university curriculum does not necessarily align with what theatre employers are looking for in terms of field experience and knowledge of the art form itself. Students should go see theatre if they are getting a degree in theatre management!

A big special thanks to the following theatres for taking the time from their very full schedules to come and spend an afternoon with us:
24th Street Theatre, Colony Theatre Company, Deaf West Theatre, East West Players, Fountain Theatre, LA Theatre Center, Theatre @ Boston Court, Little Fish Theatre/Shakespeare by the Sea, Blank Theatre Company, Ebony Repertory Theatre, Elephant Theatre Company, Ghost Road Company, Long Beach Playhouse, Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble (LATE), Theatre West, Pacific Resident Theatre, Son of Semele Ensemble
-Patricia

Ask and You Shall Receive

We made huge strides recently in our research for this grant by actually talking with students! We gathered 12 students from our partner universities and advisors and talked with them about what their ideal internship structure would be in an organization. All the students were extremely enthusiastic and contributed so many great ideas!

Here are a few of the highlights:
Compensation
• Students need to be paid for their work, especially at a graduate level.

Types of Projects/Tasks
• Students want project based work that serves the needs and increases the capacity of the organization.
• They would like to be supported with their tasks within a safe space to make mistakes.

Mentorship Opportunities
• It is very important to the students that their mentors are prepped through training emphasizing how to work with interns for the benefit of both the organization and the intern.
• Students would like ideally to have a comprehensive view of the organization, working in various departments first, then honing in on one specific area of focus.

Expectations and End Results
• What Students Want the Most:
-Access to the “players” in theatre companies and arts organizations.
-Understanding the politics and cultures of how different organizations work and decisions are made.
-Opportunities to mix and mingling with professionals
-Getting to know other interns—the people they’ll be working with in the future.
• Real Work Experience:
-Understanding use of real budgets, planning processes, and scheduling
-Being exposed to resources, product, and capital that really exist and mean something.
-Being placed in an environment where there are professional systems and protocols.
-Building a network.
-Making connections to larger community and national theatre trends.

A big special thanks to the following students for their insight and participation-your contribution to this research has been invaluable:
Hunter Bird, Lisa Dring, Mira Greene, Marisa Johnston, Jaeeun Joon, Chelsea Larkin, Yanda Li, Alex Lydon, Elena Muslar, Rachel Saltzman, Laura Swanson, Michael Vanderbilt, Erika Varela, and Ashley Walden

On a side note: Theatre Communications Group (TCG) had their annual conference here in Los Angeles and I was able to finally meet Mohammad Shatara, TCG’s Artistic Programs Associate who has been helping with everything to do with this grant so thanks Mo!

Here is a picture of him with Leslie and me celebrating TCG’s 50th Birthday out at the Music Center Plaza. Cheers to TCG for helping us to do this great research!


-Patricia

Learning From the Experts

If you are a student studying arts management you should become familiar with The Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE). AAAE is an international organization incorporated as a nonprofit institution whose mission is to represent college and university graduate and undergraduate programs in arts administration, encompassing training in the management of visual, performing, literary, media, cultural and arts service organizations. Founded in 1975, the AAAE was created to provide a forum for communication among its members and advocate formal training and high standards of education for arts administrators. The Association, moreover, encourages its members to pursue, publish, present and disseminate research in arts management and administration to strengthen the understanding of arts management issues in the academic and professional fields.

Leslie and I ventured over to Boston for their 2011 conference hosted by the Arts Administration Graduate Program at Boston University (see picture of me above overlooking Boston). Overall, we felt it was completely invaluable for us to be present. The conference is primarily geared towards the educators of these university programs, but the conversation spanned a broad range of issues in arts management that clearly benefitted from having students and to a greater extent the “employer” in the room. There was much talk about what future employers would want. Being an “employer” we had the opportunity to chime in. I think people were fascinated that 1. We were there at all; and 2. That we are having parallel conversations about key skills and insights we are looking for in future employees.

A few major revelations that peaked our interest:
• Leadership Competencies: Most often employers are looking for key leadership skills when they hire, but how do these get taught at the university level? What skills are employers really looking for? How can universities and employers work together to develop these in future leaders?
• National Scope: We had originally thought of our Theatre Management Internship program being only open to local university partners, but after meeting with many other universities there is a definite interest for students nationally to be able to participate. Can we design a program that can encompass a national pool of students? Or is this an opportunity for a national organization, such as TCG, to create a national program?

We had some fantastic conversations that have helped to evolve our thinking and want to thank some of the conference attendees for taking time to share with us their insights: Laura Zucker and Diana Luna from Claremont Graduate University, David Edelman from Shenandoah University, Dee Boyle from University of Massachusetts Amherst Extension Services, and Antonio Cuyler from Purchase College.

It was so great to be there so big thanks to Barbara Harkins, the Administrative Director of AAAE, for talking with me and giving us the opportunity to be in the room.
-Patricia

Breaking Down Barriers

Sitting down for breakfast with Leslie Tamaribuchi, Associate Dean of School of Theatre at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) opened us up to a non-traditional approach of arts management.

CalArts has three management tracks in their program: Producing, Stage Management, and Production Management. The two most closely aligned with some of the other programs we are exploring would be the producing and production management strands. Each program has specific goals, but essentially they focus on the basics of management including budgeting, marketing, public relations, fundraising, and analyzing a script critically.

Students work on many hands-on projects throughout their time at CalArts in order to provide them a sampling of the type of work they would potentially be doing out in their careers. CalArts considers project management experience vital to their management students. CalArts believes in giving students the right general skills and tools, but also wants students to be able to develop their own specific focus. Each student in their fifth semester has a required internship. Often CalArts students are placed in for-profit settings. They have worked with a wide range of organizations such as amusements parks, in film or television. Leslie posed very valid questions for us to consider along our discovery journey: The theatre world is very expansive. Could our program be bigger by incorporating different businesses or by partnering with different types of institutions?

•How do we not set up barriers but rather support a fluid professional exchange between commercial businesses and non-profits? Why is there a commercial and non-profit divide?

•How do we change the perspective/image of our field? How can we broaden the discussion on where theatre management skills can be applied?

I have an intern here in our Education Department this semester named Elena Muslar and she just recently was accepted into the CalArts family and had this to say about what makes CalArts so uniquely exciting:
“I am immensely excited to attend CalArts after talking with students and faculty, sitting in on classes, and seeing theatrical performances! I know that I will be immersed into a mixing bowl filled with ingredients of expression, guidance, and creativity. From the start, The School of Theatre’s MFA Management program specifically has enticed me because of the personal attention CalArts provides for each student, respect for the student’s individual ideas to be cultivated, and the quick immersion into the theatre department through the Producing track. I am eager to be going into a program where I will get my feet wet right off the bat, producing shows and working on management issues so that I can attack them as an arts manager of the future!”
-Patricia

Your Past is Your Future

Isn’t it always the case that you return to the place you know the best to learn new things? Well that is the case for me anyways. I graduated not too long ago from the MFA/MBA Program at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Actually me and my good friend Jeremy Ancalade, now Director of Operations at Shakespeare Center Los Angeles were the very first graduates with the joint degree program. This program truly did help me get where I am today.

The MFA/MBA in Theatre Management is a three year full time program (including two summer sessions) offered jointly between the Theatre Arts Department and the Graduate School of Business. In addition to the core courses in theatre management, the MFA/MBA students take an additional 30 units of business courses including finance, accounting, marketing, strategic business management and operations.

Nicki Genovese, the new Head of the Theatre Management program, and Eric Imley, Managing Director of their graduate student theatre company California Repertory Company, both brought up interesting points about what benefits a partnership with a university can have and what drawbacks it has specifically for the university. The benefits could include the support system the students have in a university setting including access they have to research, professors, etc. One of the few drawbacks is the potential for the university to perhaps be “called on” in the solving of a problem for these local theatres that the students get placed in during their internships. Many times if a graduate student who is still learning goes out into the professional environment they are not going to have all the answers right away. So the student then leans back on their university advisors for help and thus the university professors in some sense are “aiding” or “mentoring” these organizations.

Having met with all three of our academic advisors, an emergent idea that has also become clear is the need for an ongoing dialogue to take place between all local academic institutions who offer these types of arts management degrees. We see this as an easy opportunity that CTG could help facilitate and plan on adding that to our To Do List in this process.

I am excited to meet fellow CSULB management candidates and have them participate in our student focus groups. I want my alma mater to succeed and grow and I am so fortunate and thrilled to be able to work with them as a theatre management professional.
-Patricia

Learning From Our Predecessors

Next on our journey we decided to go straight to someone who has seen it all in the internship world.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors established the Arts Internship Program (which provides internships for nonprofit performing, presenting, literary and municipal arts organizations). The purpose of the County's program is to provide undergraduate students with meaningful on-the-job training and experience in working in nonprofit arts organizations, while assisting arts organizations to develop future arts leaders.

Some of the stated goals of their program are that students:
•Develop a deeper understanding of the work involved in nonprofit arts administration;
•Better understand the role of the arts in a community;
and
•Develop "real life" business skills that can be put to use in their future careers.

During the ten-week course of the summer internships, participating organizations gain the assistance of extra staff to help with special or seasonal projects. Participating organizations also play an important role in molding and shaping potential new workers in the arts sector who may go on to arts leadership positions on staffs or boards.

It was very helpful to hear what challenges there are in placing students in various organizations including:
•Each student has highly personalized career learning needs and interests;
•Organizations are at varied levels of readiness to create an intern experience that is rich and satisfying to both sides;
and
•Students and participating organizations need a high level of ongoing support to ensure placements are successful.

Angela specifically mentioned the outcry from graduate students desiring this type of formal internship since currently their program is only open to undergraduate students. It seems our assertion could be correct that graduate students are craving this type of placement internship.

We hope to have past LA County interns in our focus group because they have uniquely experienced a successful internship placement and we want to get their input on how that experience affected where they are now.

The LA County Arts Commission fosters excellence, diversity, vitality, understanding and accessibility of the arts in Los Angeles County. The Commission provides leadership in cultural services for the County, including information and resources for the community, artists, educators, arts organizations and municipalities.
There are over 2,800 arts organizations and 150,000 working artists in the County of Los Angeles, creating the largest concentration of arts activity in the United States.

Are Organizations Ready For This?

We had a very interesting discussion with project advisor Terence McFarland, Executive Director of LA Stage Alliance.

LA Stage Alliance is the go to resource for local theatres and thus is a great partner for us on this project to discover more about how we might identify and partner with other local Los Angeles theatre companies to provide “real world” professional training experiences for graduate theatre management students. Since LA Stage is a service organization they often work with a whole variety of theatres on a range of issues and opportunities.

Terence proved to be an invaluable resource as expected, offering to facilitate our talking with selected theatres directly and also asking lots of great questions about our idea. We got into a really meaningful conversation about “organizational readiness” to serve as a host for a graduate student: What infrastructure and capacity does any organization need to create a meaning and mutually beneficial opportunity for both the theatre and the student? Our initial thinking was to pair students with “small theatres” imagining that smaller theatres would have the most need and create the most opportunity for substantive work. But, Terence encouraged us to not just consider size (what did we mean by “small” anyways – number of staff, number of productions per year, budget size, size of facility) but to also think about things like – the presence of a leader at the organization who could serve as a management mentor, the theatres ability to offer an advanced learning environment, and their interest in nurturing new leaders not just having some extra hands to help.

Terence also offered an idea for further exploration: LA Stage Alliance has partnered with the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles to establish a prototype Hollywood Art Retention Project (HARP) that seeks to assist arts and cultural organizations to remain in Hollywood, and to bring organizations back to the area. The CRA/LA retained the services of LA Stage Alliance as the lead consultant to conduct in-depth facility and organizational needs assessments. Terence suggested that this project might be of particularly interesting to graduate students as it looks at involved theatres from a strategic vantage point, considering core organizational aspects such as long-range planning, budgeting, and organizational leadership. Could CTG place graduates as support staff in the CRA/LA projects? Would this type of internship be interesting to people studying arts management?

LA Stage Alliance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization empowering artists and engaging audiences since 1975, is dedicated to building awareness, appreciation and support for the performing arts in Greater Los Angeles strengthening the sector through audience engagement, community building, collaborative marketing, professional development and advocacy. LA STAGE serves over 500 arts organizations annually, 300+ dues-paying member organizations comprised of professional, educational and community-based producing and presenting performing arts organizations, with the remaining groups coming from the broader arts and culture community.
-Patricia and Leslie

Are You Ready?

Discussion with Project Advisor Terry Wolverton, Faculty Supervisor for Claremont Arts Management Graduate Program


One of our project advisors on this journey is Claremont Graduate School here in California. Claremont has a Masters of Arts in Arts Management, which “blends the best of the renowned Drucker School of Management and the School of Arts and Humanities to balance business courses with advanced cultural studies. Cultural institutions in the profit and nonprofit sector are seeking capable managers with an understanding of the arts and business to head museums, theatre and dance companies, cultural centers, music and arts education organizations, and to advocate for the future of the arts.”

During the last year in the program, students must complete a capstone project—An Arts Management Consulting Practicum and Final Report. It is approximately a 100 hours semester-long project culminating in a formal consulting report. The required deliverables are status reports during the semester, a final written report plus a final presentation to the organization attended by the faculty supervisor of the student’s consulting project.

The Arts Management department will assist in partnering students with a local art or cultural nonprofit organization. Students are partnered according to their professional backgrounds and interests if possible.

Sample consulting projects can be found here.

When I was listening to Terry speak about the culminating experience for Claremont arts management graduate students I could not help but hearken back to my theatre management graduate days which were not so long ago. I had to ask the question: would I have been ready for this experience at the end of my program? It was a real eye opening question because I would have, honestly, had to say no. I still needed a critical internship experience bridging school to real world theatre work in order to apply all of my school lessons to everyday occurrences. What do you all think? Are you ready? In what ways are graduate level students ready for a consultant project in various arts organizations? What do they still have to learn? Or considering the caliber and experience of the Claremont Arts Management students does it really depend on the student?

Next Steps: More insights from our other project advisors!

Patricia Garza
Center Theatre Group
Department Manager
Education and Community Partnerships
pgarza@CenterTheatreGroup.org

Who will play my part?: Supporting the next generation of arts managers

As part of Center Theatre Group’s (CTG) work with emerging artists and arts professionals, we administer the Richard E. Sherwood Awards Programs. The Programs include the Sherwood Internship, a six-month, paid position offered to emerging and early careers arts professionals. The Sherwood Intern works to ensure successful administration of the Sherwood Award application and selection process. Last year, as we searched for the 2010 Sherwood Intern, we struggled with finding the right fit. We came across lots of candidates who had the right academic know-how, and artistic interests; but most had no real arts management experience. Through much searching, we ultimately found a great Sherwood Intern (so great, in fact, that last week we added her to our Education team in a permanent, full-time position), but the dilemma really stuck in the craw of our Education and Community Partnerships Department Manager, Patricia Garza.

Patricia is a 20-something arts manager with MFA/MBA in Theatre Management from California State University, Long Beach. And, as her degree implies, Patricia possesses that ideal 21st century combination of a right and left brain that function at equally high levels and in tandem. Patricia lamented, “Why don’t more arts management programs include work away from academia and campus? How are people supposed to make the transition from school to work?” And, as is her style, she offered, “Wouldn’t it be cool if CTG could connect emerging theatre managers with job experience.”
I don’t know…would it be?

So to give credit where credit is due: the notion for this investigation started with Patricia. But she really got me thinking. So much of our work in education focuses on building the audiences of tomorrow, and to a lesser extent the artists of tomorrow.
But what are we as theatre professionals doing to support the arts administrators of tomorrow? And is that our job?

Through TCG and MetLife, we now have the time and opportunity to investigate this idea with our Think It! Grant. Over the course of this year, we will embark on a research project, working with colleagues from the Los Angeles theatre and arts administration community. We will gather the opinions of academic chairs and graduate students. And we hope to collect lots of perspectives and voices, including yours:

If you are an arts administrator/manager…
Where and when in your life did the critical school-to-work bridge happen?

If you are a graduate arts management student…
What kind of program would help you get where you want to be?

If you are an academic chair or professor in an arts management program…
What kinds of real world experiences would complement the training you are providing?

If you are a theatre professional…
What role do/could arts management graduate students play in your work?

We are just starting our journey and would love to hear from you.

Next Steps: Broadening Our Perspective: Meeting with Our Project Advisors:
Terrance McFarland, Executive Director, LA Stage Alliance; Angela Milanovic, Technical Assistance Programs Manager, Los Angeles County Arts Commission; and Terry Wolverton, Consultant.

Leslie K. Johnson
Director of Education and Community Partnerships
Center Theatre Group
ljohnson@CenterTheatreGroup.org

Center Theatre Group’s education and community partnership programs are organized under three broad strategic initiatives:

AUDIENCES – helping audiences of all ages discover theatre and its connection to their lives

ARTISTS – investing in the training, support and development of emerging and early career artists and arts professionals who are the future of our field

ARTS EDUCATION LEADERSHIP – working to improve the quality and scope of arts education in Los Angeles County

Our exploration of how and whether CTG could/should develop a graduate level intern program supports the second strand of this work. To review our entire Strategic Design for Education and Engagement, please visit Center Theatre Group's website here.

MetLife Foundation and TCG Announce Third Round Recipients of the A-ha! Program

MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group announce the third round of recipients for the A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which encourages TCG member theatres to think and act creatively. Six theatres were awarded grants, totaling $225,000, to either research and develop new production ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts in the theatre field. The total award amount is a 50 percent increase from last year’s total of $150,000.

The 2010 A-ha! Program recipients are:

Think It

Pillsbury House Theatre will develop its transformation into a Cultural Community Hub. The project will focus on assessment and metrics planning that will define and measure organizational success.

Curious Theatre Company will explore innovative opportunities for reinventing the resident artistic company model for the 21st century American theatre, by re-centering artists within producing organizations.

Center Theatre Group plans to conduct focus groups and interviews with students, academic administrators and theatres to explore an internship model that pairs graduate students in arts administration with Los Angeles theatres.

Do It

Southern Rep will establish Youth Onstage New Orleans, LA (YO NOLA) as a pilot program to bring the arts to the underserved population at a New Orleans elementary school, via a student-run theatre company. This program includes mentoring, workshops and building life skills.

Northlight Theatre is building Northlight On Campus, a two-year, comprehensive residency program in one underserved suburban middle school featuring after-school drama programs, artist visits, student matinees and a commissioned play for students.

Dad's Garage Theatre Company will create their first season of online content in tandem with their live work. This ongoing initiative will be self sustaining and will redefine them from a theatre company to a creative company.