BWW Blog: Monica Furman - Spotlight on Chapman Alum LeeAnn Dowd

This week has been a lot of schoolwork and rehearsals (the usual). So, I decided to interview one of my favorite humans who happens to also be in the theatre. LeeAnn Dowd was the first Chapman person I met; it was during the summer before my freshman year in NYC while she was interning. We instantly hit it off and she even came to one of our shows! During my freshman year I looked at LeeAnn, a senior at the time, as a role model; she started Cross the Line with another senior, Sierra Stenzel, the club that I'm leading now. Our outlook on theatre was very similar. We also went on to do ASTEP's Artist as Citizen Conference together, which was an incredible experience for us to share. Even though LeeAnn has graduated and moved to San Francisco, we still keep in touch and she graciously let me interview her for the blog. Hope you enjoy getting to know a recent post-grad perspective!

Name: LeeAnn Dowd

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Job title and roles/duties: Artistic Coordinator at California Shakespeare Theater, freelance director/actor

I provide support for the artistic team, which includes our artistic director and casting director. I'm sort of a casting associate, artistic associate, and general administrative assistant. I'm basically the bottom-line support for the artistic team. I love a lot of things about it-- for it's size, Cal Shakes has a relatively small staff, so I get to be a part of the artistic and organizational decisions that are being made. I feel very encouraged to make suggestions and pitch ideas. At the moment, we're having season-specific conversations about casting and how we market and do community engagement around the work. As a company, Cal Shakes is incredibly supportive of it's staff, and especially its young, emerging professionals- I feel very lucky to be there. I also love the vision that Eric [Ting, artistic director] articulates for the company; it's entering into a really exciting time in it's history. More and more, we're stepping into a reality where Cal Shakes is creating work that has measurable social impact, and work that widens our understanding of what "classics" look like in California in the 21st century. As someone who has always nerded out about The Public and their model, it's very exciting to be involved in a company that is implementing a similar vision in the Bay Area, a place I love.

I'll also add that when I'm not helping out with all of the above at Cal Shakes, I also work in the amazing Bay Area theater community as a freelance director/actor/producer/general helpful human!

Favorite theatre experience you've seen in the past six months:

Not to be plugging Cal Shakes even more than I already have, but we just closed our mainstage production of Othello and that was a very crazy, very educational experience (Google #LoveHateOthello).

Outside of my work bubble... I just saw a production of Young Jean Lee's The Shipment at Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco and I can't stop thinking about it. It's a play about what it means to be black in the US, and about how we all think and talk about race in general. What struck me most about it is that it constantly kept me in a state of uncertainty- it didn't use a traditional narrative structure; it blurred the line between what's considered offensive and what's transgressive; it made the audience laugh and then challenged the audience for laughing, and then challenged the audience for judging the people who were laughing. It was definitely an example of the work I find to be the most compelling, that explodes the idea of what theatre has to look like to be a powerful and impactful tool.

Three words to describe the Chapman theatre department:

Collaborative, inquiry, and personal.

What skills have you learned in the theatre department that you still use today, transferrable or otherwise?

I'd say that the thing about my own personal experience at Chapman is that I encountered a lot of obstacles that made it difficult to generate my own work and collaborate with my peers outside of the department structure. I don't know if this is unique to Chapman necessarily, but it always felt very difficult getting things out of "Idea-Land" and into reality. But learning to navigate and overcome those challenges in school definitely prepared me for reality- because, boy, those obstacles certainly exist outside of school.

I also want to add that, while there were challenges around getting student-produced work off the ground, I also was so, so lucky to have professors who encouraged, supported, and facilitated my idea. The ones who, when I would whine about wanting to make something happen but that it was too hard, would say, "Stop complaining and make it happen. The only one who is going to take responsibility for this is you." Chapman really helped me develop the habit of taking initiative, and that initiative has certainly served me after leaving school.

Favorite class and why:

My favorite class at Chapman was, I'd say, Actor Process with Michael Nehring. Strangely, even though it's a class about the process of developing a performance as an actor, I learned so much about being a director. Pf. Nehring's whole approach was about making sure that, at every step of the way, you're very clear about the story you're telling moment-to-moment, and that all of those moments together create the larger story of the piece. There was just a moment for me in that class where the mechanic of storytelling snapped into focus for me, and that was the first time I was like, "Hmmm, directing..." It also sort of introduced me to how, as an actor, you can have an active role in generating new work, which is what I am very interested in right now.

Favorite theatre-related opportunity at Chapman and why:

Everything related to developing an ensemble and creating a structure that you hope will outlast you. Cross the Line came out of a hope that Sierra and I both had about making a real impact on the kind of work being generated by and for students in the department, but I also didn't really know what I was doing. I think I did some things that were good, and some things that were bad, and I learned from it all. Specifically, collaborating on and producing "Revisions" with Cross the Line was very important to me. I loved every part of that process- the writing and the research and the directing and the producing and the talkback facilitating- through that I was able to get a glimpse of the theater maker I ultimately want to be: someone with a lot of title slashes, but who works on things that they really care about.

Advice to current Chapman theatre students:

My own personal experience after leaving school was tough, honestly. It took me about three years to adjust to not being in school anymore. I think I expected myself to hit the ground running and sort of be a success in no time at all, and then I graduated and things didn't happen as quickly as I had envisioned. I discovered that, like anything else, the transition takes time.

One of the little tricks I'll share that really helped me in the beginning was to think about my post-grad life in units of college time. In other words, the first year out of college, you're a freshman in Real World. Second year, a sophomore. It's sort of silly, but it actually really helped with remembering that any time you enter a new environment, you're not gonna be an expert right away. It takes time to figure out the ropes, and to find your own way. In college, I felt like I hit my stride as a junior- and the same has felt true as I start my "junior year" in the Bay.

So what I would say to myself three years ago would be, give yourself time to adjust. I'd say, try not to be so hard on yourself if at first things don't look the way you thought they would. Your path is your path, and it's not going to look like anyone else's.

Anything else you'd like to say?

I think sometimes theatre people get in the habit of equating success in our professional lives with success in our personal lives. Because of the nature of what we do, it's hard to think of these two things as distinct- they tend to overlap so much. But if your career isn't taking off or you're not constantly working on a project, it can begin to feel like your whole life is a failure in all aspects. I certainly dealt with this in college- I still do. But the truth is that who we are and what we do are two different things. I had this realization at the Artist as Citizens conference that my real job is to make sure that I am growing as a human and that I am a person I like. That is primary. For me, that's what success actually looks like.

Want to keep up with LeeAnn? Check out her website: http://leeanndowd.com/.

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