INTERVIEW: Drama League continues to be vital resource for aspiring artists
Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, executive artistic director of The Drama League, has a lot on his theatrical plate. The organization he has called home for more than 16 years is an artistic watering hole to so many theatrical creators, especially directors who take advantage of the organization’s development programs, residencies and theatrical offerings.
As executive artistic director, Stelian-Shanks is tasked with leading the arts and education programs for The Drama League. Additionally, he needs to think creatively on how to fundraise for those programs.
The Drama League is not a new kid on the Broadway block. The organization has been around for many decades, and its annual awards ceremony is the oldest of its kind. This year’s ceremony, taking place Friday, May 19 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square, will honor Bette Midler for distinguished achievement in musical theater, Bill Berloni for unique contribution to the theater and Michael Greif with The Founders Award for Excellence in Directing. In the competitive categories, productions from Broadway and off-Broadway will face off in the following categories: Outstanding Production of a Play, Outstanding Production of a Musical, Outstanding Revival of a Play, Outstanding Revival of a Musical and the Distinguished Performance Award.
If Bette Midler doesn’t sound glitzy enough, Audra McDonald and Will Swenson will host the evening.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Stelian-Shanks about The Drama League, including the organization’s past and its future. At the time of the interview, Berloni and Greif were announced as special winners; Midler’s recognition was still under lock and key. Here’s what he had to say:
On The Drama League’s annual awards …
“They’re the oldest awards in North America for theatrical honors, and we honor Broadway and off-Broadway. We have five competitive awards for productions and performances as well as some special career achievement recognitions. We have announced two of the three of those.
“The first one is Bill Berloni, the celebrated animal trainer of Broadway. Almost anytime you see an animal working on a stage, it’s Bill Berloni’s training that’s done that. From The Crucible last year with the wolf to Legally Blonde to birds, any animal that you see on stage, that’s Bill’s work. And then we also have a Founders Award for excellence in directing because most of our education programs revolved around the training of early and mid-career directors, and that award this year is going to go Michael Greif, who is represented on Broadway twice this season with Dear Evan Hansen and War Paint but also is the celebrated director of Rent and Grey Gardens and If/Then and so many other shows.”
On how the nominees are chosen …
“There’s an eligibility committee that meets and brainstorms and looks at people who really have made enormous contributions to the theater, and they make a choice. It’s a group of arts professionals.”
On The Drama League’s success in the past few years …
“It’s been pretty easy in the last six or seven years because we’ve been growing every year. Our budget has doubled since 2009 through the great support of our board of directors and our funders. We also now serve over 3,000 artists and 15,000 audience members annually.
“When I started at The Drama League in 2001, we served eight artists, so to go from eight to 3,000 is a pretty big jump. But then we’re also seeing those artists start to reap success. … Almost a third of the shows on Broadway that opened this season were directed by alumni of our program. Our alumni are now the artistic directors of over 60 theaters across the country. They’re working in Europe. They’re working in film and television, so we can see the results in these young people as they mature, as they continue on through their careers. We make a lifetime commitment to the young people that we serve, and many of them, we’re lucky enough to say, have reached the heights of these fields.”
On the opportunities available for directors …
“We have three arms: fellowships, which are essentially programs to train a young artist/director in one of many different methodologies; residencies, which are to help directors and their playwrights and designers/collaborators build new plays and musicals for the theater; or exchanges, which are opportunities for those artists to work abroad and receive training, do research, or create productions and collaborations across the globe.”
On the current state of the arts in the United States …
“It is a very expensive endeavor to support artists and to support art at this point, and there is not a lot of support out there for it. You spend a lot of time really talking about your mission, talking about the artists that you serve and trying to bring people to the cause, and we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve been very lucky in that we’ve been able to do that.”
On his first days at The Drama League …
“I was hired as the director of membership in 2001. I actually thought I was coming to run an education department, but I arrived a month before 9/11. I don’t know if you remember, but after 9/11, everyone quit going to the theater. It was a rather debilitating time for the arts scene in New York City, and so we rapidly had to reinforce our membership base and reinforce our programming to make sure that we could withstand some very rough times. So that’s what I did when I got here.”
On what excites him about New York City theater in 2017 …
“I’m seeing the explosion of form and the explosion of space. … Some people are sitting on the stage, and there are runways that go from the orchestra up to the mezzanine. And actors run through the whole space. It’s a sense that the old models of performance maybe need some reenergizing and thinking differently about how audiences want to do it.
“Certainly if you look at immersive works like Sleep No More or the Paradise Hotel or some of those things, you start to see that audience’s relationship to art is changing in the space itself, and I find that very exciting. I find the way that people want to encounter theater, the way that theater is being made is changing. Some of these things that I think people thought were detriments of a real lack of space and time, to their credit, theater artists have been using them to their advantage and finding new ways to make them work.”
On the rising costs of theater tickets and theater productions in New York City …
“I think we’re facing a period where even an overnight success is a 10 to 15-year process for an actor or director. The level of commitment and the level of struggle given the economics of the system is really daunting. It’s much harder to come into the professional theater now than when I started. I think it’s harder now than it was even 10 years ago, and I don’t see that changing. I think the lack of resources, I think the lack of production opportunity, I think the lack of creative opportunity is here to stay for the moment, and so [it’s important to figure] out how we support the next generation and make sure that they don’t abandon the theater for other career paths or leave New York City because it’s just too expensive. And they can’t find a foothold. How we keep those creative people here is going to be, I think, the great challenge of the next 10 to 20 years in this field.”
On the uniqueness of The Drama League …
“There aren’t a lot of drama leagues. There are some organizations, our sister organizations like The Lark and The Playwrights Realm, places that support playwrights, and there are some places that support actors. But for director,s they are few and far between, and for designers, I can’t think of any that do the kind of things we do. So I’m hoping that we are joined by others in this cause of sort of making sure future generations have a way to continue to create bold and imaginative work. Otherwise I think we’re in danger of losing something vital and essential to New York City.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Drama League will present its annual awards Friday, May 19. Click here for more information and tickets.
