Interview: Queensbury Theatre's Executive Director Kristina Sullivan Gives Us a Sneak Peek of Newly Launched Bridge Program and Its Debut Production of SPRING AWAKENING

Queensbury Theatre-- West Houston’s only professional theatre-- is producing Spring Awakening, the first production by the theatre’s recently created Bridge Program, which connects recent graduates and young professionals in Houston’s theatrical community. When reading about Queensbury Theatre’s developments, I was certainly intrigued, and I was lucky to have the chance to talk with Kristina Sullivan, Queensbury Theatre’s Executive Director and Director of Education. She shared with BroadwayWorld Houston Queensbury Theatre’s history, the goals of the new Bridge Program, why Spring Awakening was chosen to be the debut show for this program, and much more!

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I would like to start us off by talking about Queensbury Theatre. I personally have not heard of your program before, but after looking into your company’s work, I am certainly intrigued! Do you happen to know about the company’s history and how it came to be? Additionally, how has it developed over time?

Queensbury Theatre as it is now-- in this building and under this iteration and name-- has been here since 2015. However, it evolved out of a much older theater in Houston called Country Playhouse. I believe it was founded in the 60s, so it has been here for a while, and there was a curative event nearly ten years ago where the theater at the time had the opportunity to move into a new building. The area that we were in is the city center area, and it was really changing a lot at that point. The board of directors and the community was involved with that, and with the brand-new building and the area changing a lot, they went ahead and thought about rebranding the entire entity. That’s how the name “Queensbury Theatre” evolved and came to be in 2015, and that's when this space-- which is on Queensbury Lane—opened. However, there are a lot of people in this community who used to come to the Country Playhouse for years and years with their families, and they grew up with it.

Can you tell us a bit about your background? What brought you to Queensbury Theatre and your current role within it?

When Queensberry opened its doors to this new building, one of the things that the team at the time thought would be important was to really expand on the education program. I knew that Country Playhouse up until then had a little bit of educational programming, but it was more like summer camps and not something that they did year-round. So, I was connected. I was working with another theater at that point, and I got connected by one of the board members. I initially came on to be the Director of Education for the Tribble School, which is the education wing of Queensbury. I had worked for about 10 years up to that point in Houston as an actor. I was part of a resident company, and I had worked as a director and a teacher. I was excited to come in and really have a fresh start in this beautiful building to build a school. Since then, for the first couple of years, I was really just acting as Director of Education and working with Bethany White, who headed up the dance program. We really started on day one, and we have built up the school to be something that's really a year-round Academy where we do all kinds of art. We do musical theatre, plays, ballet, tap…you name it! I was involved in that position for the first couple of years and then a few years back (really right before the pandemic), I was asked to step-up and move to the role of Executive Director, which was-- as you can imagine-- an exciting time to become Executive Director! It was the fall of 2019, and it timed out where I was getting my sea legs while theater everywhere was figuring out how to navigate through the pandemic. We all had to figure out how we were going to keep the thing alive throughout COVID. In summary, my first background was more as an actor. Then I was a teacher, which led to me being a director. Then, it evolved to being where I am now, which is that I still get to teach-- which I love-- but now I am also the Director for the theater!

Just to confirm, you are currently both the Queensbury Theatre Executive Director and the Director of Education, correct?

Yes, you are correct! We are still a pretty small staff, so a lot of us wear multiple hats, but we're lucky. I am lucky to have the staff that works here. Everybody is just so passionate, and most of us are doing more than one thing. Throughout my years working in the performing arts within Houston, I've always found that it is cool to get your hand in multiple things because then you have a better appreciation of all the different things that go into it. I am the Director of Education, but there are two associate directors who do a lot of heavy lifting, so that absolutely helps!

Can you tell us what your titles mean? What do your roles all entail?

Some of it is just about making sure that the car is driving smoothly in terms of just oversight of the theater and all of the things that come with being a nonprofit. For example, I have to work to make sure that we are earning the sales that we hope to, and that's been more of a challenge since the pandemic. So, I work to make sure that we have good relationships with our community and our donors. We have had such generous people in this community, many of them having been a part of the theater-- whether that is through the school, the theater at large, or both-- for many, many years. They have been generous with their time and their contributions, so my role is just making sure that we are going in the right direction in terms of what we need in order to keep ourselves moving. Then, I get to have a hand in working with staff. I have staff that are so smart and so talented, and that's really more about collaborating and making sure that we all feel like we have a sense of ownership of what we are doing. I want to also make sure that everyone feels like they have a work-life balance, but also get to do the things they are passionate about when they're here. As a nonprofit, some of my role has to do with working with the board or working with hiring new people when we need to. However, the most fun part of my job is when I get to wear the director cap and work with the kids, whether it’s the first and second graders or it's the older students. Directing never feels like work; it is just such a joy!

I understand that Queensbury Theatre has started a new program called The Bridge Program and that this program hopes to connect recent graduates and young professionals in Houston’s theatrical community. Can you talk to me about what led you to creating this program? What are your goals for the program, and what are the current plans to reach those goals?

To back up into it a little bit, one of my most favorite things about my job over my past eight years of working here is that-- with the school-- we have had a lot of students, and we have had the opportunity to not only work with really talented kids but to work with them for years and years. So, some of our students have been with us for the entire time we've been here, which is a special gift to watch. We have watched kids from when they were in 5th grade grow up to graduate high school. Some have gone off to do performing arts as their vocation and head off to study it at college. So, over the years, we've built more and more and more of a community of not just students that are active with us in our school, but also actors who are graduating and going off to college. I know I'm probably biased but I think some of the kids we work with are just stellar. They are so talented! So, heading into this summer, we have our largest-ever graduating senior class from high school, and I think we have about 10 students that are graduating from our high school program. So, this past May and early June, we were trying to think about what to do as a send-off for them before many of them head off to conservatories and go do their thing. At the same time, we have a lot of students who have graduated in years past who will come back in the summers and intern with us. They will teach or help the designers. When we were looking at all of these immediate, amazing students who are either graduating seniors, young college students, or young professionals, it seemed like there was such a cool opportunity to try and find a way to build something that brought all of those talents and personalities together. My coworker Bethany White (who leads the dance program) and I were talking one day, and she said we want to find a way to bridge the gap. A lot of times after high school—if you want to be an actor, performer, or dancer—you go to college and spend a lot of time training, which is necessary. However, how do you take that next step to getting to do something on the stage in a pre-professional or professional way? So, we thought the word “bridge” was a really cool, active term. You just visualize what it is! Therefore, we began to think about building a program that we hope will take the pieces of what we already love and have been so lucky to work with and maybe become an annual program. It would be in the summers, and it might expand to something beyond that as we go. I think there's a synergy when you get to work with people who are in a stage that comes right after the stage that you are in and vice versa; you then get to learn from each other. Then, it also culminates into a really cool production!

So, Spring Awakening is the first production from this new program. How did your team come to the decision that Spring Awakening was a good pick for this program’s debut show?

Spring Awakening is a show that I've had lots of conversations about over the past months with different people, and it's one that many of our graduating students have felt passionate about for a long time. Over the years, we get to form relationships with these kids, and we learn what their bucket list shows are and what their dream roles are. One show that came up over and over over the years was Spring Awakening, but it's also a show that my co-directors and I felt had to be done at the right time and in the right way since it deals with subjects that are tough and certainly mature. Having been an actor, I think that when you're an artist who is drawn to something, there is a reason why. So, we looked at the show, the message of it, and the ultimate values that it held at its heart. Then, we talked with these kids about why they love it. After weighing all of that, we really thought yes, this is a more heavy show and it's certainly not a show that all of our school students should come see (often what we're doing here is more family-friendly for all generations), but this is one that we thought speaks to something that is really relevant right now for so many of our students. They are going through what we all did, but for the past couple of years, the world has been such an unexpected challenge for so many people. So, we thought that this show was one that we could take and really dive into with them in order to explore the tough things and talk about why they're in this show. Ultimately, the message of the show is about how you turn the sad and the dark things that happen in your life into light. It is an amazing opportunity to get to work with these kids; they just light up for this show and the conversations that come with it. How often do you have a room full of like 18–19-year-olds where there is no one on the phone, everyone's engaged, and we're talking about life? We talked about how we want to live our lives in a way that has joy and brings light. This show is giving us the opportunity to have such great conversations and connections. Of course, doing this show meant that we've had to address its content and make sure that we are handling it with care. We are making sure that people in our community know what this show is about and that we are not always going to be doing shows that are this edgy. However, it is undeniable that the show’s core message is valuable. It is worth it. That is why we decided to go with it.

I noticed on the website that you are a co-director for this production. What was your artistic vision when you started working on this show?

So, I spent a lot of time not only looking at the musical, but also reading the play and learning how the authors of the musical came at it. I went backwards; I went from the end of the show. I started with the messages that the only true thing we can control in life are the relationships we have as well that we have the responsibility for leading with love, light, and kindness. As a team, we started with that as our groundwork because we want to give that to your audiences. We also knew that we had to live those messages out in our rehearsal process with how we approached the material and interacted with each other. Sometimes, I come at things with a visual, and for this show, it is about light and dark. Ultimately, light has to be the thing we focus on as artists but also as humans with each other.

Can you tell us about how the show’s development and rehearsal process has been?

Yea! So, we began the development process way back in the spring. We had our visions, and then we opened it up to the community. About 75% of this cast are students that we have worked with and are graduating now, are currently in college, or have graduated college recently and are young professionals. Then, it's been such a benefit to everyone that we were able to add a few additional young professionals that we met through this process just through the auditions. That was our step one, and then we really began when we cast everyone. We began rehearsals for this only a couple weeks ago, so people had their materials, and then they joined us because it's tough with schedules, especially when they're coming home from college or they’re going to be going to college. We had to plug everything in a time frame that would work for our full cast, and it's been such a wonderful process. The cast has come in really prepared. They have treated this like they would treat a professional gig, so they were coming in ready to work; that way, we go from there and build on their energy. Everyone really just hit the ground running, and this week, we are in the final stages of our tech rehearsals, so we are working with designers. We have brought in a bunch of awesome artists, and they have brought out the vision of the entire world of the show. We have started dress rehearsals, and they are just committing to it with such professionalism from the crew to the designers to the cast. We are all really, really excited for what it is shaping up to be.

Is there anything unique about this particular production of Spring Awakening that we can look forward to, such as technical elements or a specific message that you want to share?

One of the really cool things about this show is that Bethany White—the Associate Director for our school—is our head choreographer, and she is just a brilliant choreographer. She is able to tell a story; she takes the text and puts the movement in a way that is just so unique. She also doesn’t pull you out of the story. As an audience member, you realize that you are hearing the words and hearing the melodies enhanced by what she does with the choreography, and I think that it's different from any other production of this show. Her movement perfectly matches what I feel as a director looking at the text or listening to the melodies. It is really special, and this attention to detail from the choreographer as well as the scenic and lighting directors is really cool. It really is great when you have a project where it feels like everybody is speaking the same language.

Any last thoughts that you would like to share with our BroadwayWorld Houston reader?

If you get a chance to come see this production, these actors are truly pouring their hearts out. They're leaving it on the stage. So—whether you are someone who loves Spring Awakening or someone who thinks that it is not your favorite show—you should see it just because the cast is bringing such life into the show. It's really an honor to watch them.

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Tickets for the shows-- running Friday, July 28th through Sunday, August 6th-- are available at https://www.queensburytheatre.org/. Be sure to buy your tickets now for this beautiful and meaningful production; tickets start at only $22!

 

 

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