Interview: Loretta Greco of FAR APART ART at Magic Theatre Brings the Theater World Together Via a Daily Podcast Featuring the Company's Playwrights

Theater companies all over the world are rising to the challenge of staying connected to their audiences and continuing to serve them while in-person performances are suspended for an indefinite period. San Franciso's storied Magic Theatre has come up with an inspired solution by creating Far Apart Art, a podcast series composed of brief, daily audio journals from a host of Magic's family of playwrights. Its initial run began March 30th and is currently scheduled to last for four weeks. The diverse lineup of participating playwrights includes Nilo Cruz, Paula Vogel, Nassim Soleimanpour, Mfoniso Udofia, and many other luminaries of the theater world. The intimate, roughly 5-minute podcasts are entertaining, wide-ranging in tone and approach, and can be accessed at https://soundcloud.com/magictheatresf.

BroadwayWorld recently spoke with Loretta Greco, Magic's Artistic Director, about Far Apart Art and how she and Magic are weathering the pandemic. Greco had long planned to step down from her position at the end of May after a very successful twelve years at the helm, but has now extended her tenure through August. She still hopes to direct Magic's final production of the season, Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone, and produce its annual fund-raising gala in some fashion in late summer. In conversation, Greco is warm and effusive, wonderfully articulate about what theater can do, open about her own challenges in getting through the current situation, and ultimately hopeful about the future. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

What was the impetus to create Far Apart Art and what do you hope folks will take away from it?

It's always sad when something's over and you all go your separate ways when you're in a show, and we had the run of Ricardo Pérez González' beautiful Don't Eat the Mangos interrupted. We had kind of known, we could see what was happening, and were trying moment-to-moment to be as flexible as we could, so a little bit before we interrupted, I just thought "There's gotta be a way to stay in touch with artists and their voices during this time where we're all apart." And very quickly people started putting out a lot of content and of course it's all terrific. A lot of people were in the throes of being just about to open productions so there was a lot of streaming and I just felt ... it was weird. I sat on the idea for a couple of weeks because I just felt personally like I wasn't sure if it was really our place to decide what people needed in this moment when I didn't even know what I needed.

So about a week into [the shelter-in-place], I rolled out this idea. I had spoken to Ricardo about it before we said goodbye. I said "I have this notion, I want to think a little more about it, but if we did it, would you be willing to be part of it?" By the time we actually launched it, everybody had been of in some kind of shelter-in-place situation and so it was interesting. I thought that being able to have the playwrights, which you know Magic's all about, reflect on their own vulnerabilities, it could lend a sense of solidarity and hopefully of comfort and a sense of immediacy and communion and hopefully, ultimately a sense of not being alone.

And our staff has been thinking a lot about our subscribers. Some are single individuals of a certain age, a lot of them come with friends, and then there are a lot of couples of a certain age and we just thought we want to make sure that people don't feel like they're out there alone. Sonia Fernandez, our Associate Artistic Director, really pushed for us to check in with our subscribers so we did a couple of rounds of phone calls where the staff talked to everybody. So then we launched this mini-podcast and I thought if it were short enough, if it were inside five minutes, that maybe people would listen and there'd be a nugget of something for someone out there.

The brevity of the podcasts really works for me. I feel like I'm getting overwhelmed with recommendations from well-meaning friends - like "Here's a 2-hour video to cheer you up." and it just feels like more than I can handle right now.

Yeah, I felt the same way. I know that a whole new normal needs to be forged, and I think we needed to do that prior to the virus actually. So what does that mean? I think it's gonna be really interesting for the ecosystem. I know it's very scary right now and I don't mean to make light of it at all, but I do think that it is a moment of potential reinvention and transformation. I think "Oh, god, I hope that we don't just think that we can stream what we do." Like that's not the same thing. I think it's neither theater nor is it film, it's this weird in-between thing. That said, a lot of people are doing it really well, and those people that were stuck right at the beginning of their runs, I totally understand. But I felt like one of the things that we do at Magic is we have writers that have relationships with our subscribers. It's a real artistic home. They've had multiple plays produced and have been part of multiple Virgin Play Festivals, for many of the writers, there's already a shared vocabulary. In some ways it's like checking in with a friend or a nephew or a niece or however you look at the playwright, depending on who you are. So I was hoping in some way to continue a conversation that's been going on for decades with Magic subscribers and the playwrights. And hopefully they're fun, and they're all really different cause people are in different places.

I'm enjoying hearing the playwrights' actual voices because I might have seen their work, but I didn't know what they sounded like. It gives me a whole different insight into them. With Ricardo, I'd really enjoyed his Don't Eat the Mangos, but then just by hearing him speak I felt I got to know him better.

Yeah and I think there's something about the immediacy of radio. I know the podcast is in vogue now, but the idea of getting back to basics and really being able to listen to what you can imagine about that person through their voice, I think, is a pretty intimate transaction. For those who don't already know them, it's like "Oh... oh, that's who that writer is." And then for those who do have some kind of relationship, it furthers or deepens it in some way.

With the playwrights located all over the country and beyond really, it sounds like a lot of moving parts! What does it take to put the series together?

Well, I have the easy part really of reaching out to the voices. I tried to look and say "OK, who are the writers that in my 12 years have spent the most time here, who I have real relationships with?" And then "Who are the people that I have relationships with outside of the Magic, who are a part of the Magic's legacy prior to me?" [former Artistic Director] Chris Smith was a huge champion of Stephen Belber, who I love and we just haven't produced him in my 12 years so reaching out to Steve and saying "Would you be a part of this?" was such a joy. And Nilo Cruz, who [former Artistic Director] Mame Hunt was a huge advocate for in the very beginning, for really giving Nilo a platform. So reaching out to Nilo was such a joy, and he and I personally go back decades. And then going back to Claire Chafee. Her "Why We Have a Body" was a seminal moment for Magic in San Francisco and the Women's Project in New York. I'm hoping that people who've been in the audience at the Magic, not just in the twelve years that I've been here, but over the long, beautiful trajectory of 53 years, are gonna hear a voice that they remember, that they feel like they know and can relate to.

And, you're right, they're sheltering all over the country. And I'm about to connect with Nassim Soleimanpour who's in Berlin (our last week is gonna have Nassim and Paula Vogel) and he may have an entirely different take. Penelope Skinner, who we already ran her beautiful podcast, is in London and so she recorded from where they were and what life was like there. It's interesting because some people are sheltering alone, some people are with young children, some are finding this incredibly provocative for their writing, some people aren't writing at all, some people are having trouble just even getting out of bed. There's a whole range of emotional viability that people have been willing to share.

So I pick the people and I ask them to do it and they say "yes," then we have a fantastic apprentice team of three amazing people, Hunter Nelson, Sean Dunnington and Hannah Meyer. Hannah does all the graphics and really imagines what this will look like. They all listen to them and talk about them and pull quotes so we can tease them out. Sean does the sound engineering and the voiceovers, and Hunter focuses on the best things to pull from the interviews to tease out on social media, proposes the order, and runs all the analytics - like how many times it's been listened to, how many states have been involved, and numbers outside of the country.

I just give the them notes, like "tweak this, tweak that, I wonder if this person should really follow that person [etc.]", but they've been line producing it, the three of them. It's been so much fun because it's given me a chance to make something with them. I've given them a lot of rope and it's been tremendous. Again, the goal wasn't to reinvent "the American Theater;" the goal was to give some solace and comfort to our community and I'm hoping it's doing that.

Is there any chance you'll extend Far Apart Art beyond this initial four-week run?

Yeah, we're in talks about it and it's possible that we would extend it to more writers, open it up to some of our other artists that have been a part of Magic, some designers, some actors. But the scope and the tone of it would remain the same. There are these little prompts I put together and I encourage people "Once you introduce yourself, if the prompts inspire you, great. If not, just be you; that's gonna be terrific. And be you whether this is a great day or a really hard day." So I think what we would do is take the structure and the form and the tone and we might expand it into some of the other artists that have been a part of this Magic community in supporting the writers' work. It just felt like we had to start with what we're about and why we're here, which is the writer's voice.

I would particularly love it if you included designers because we never get to hear from them and they are such a key element of what Magic does.

They're such core collaborators. Like (I don't mean this personally at all), I read reviews only to know how we're doing as an institution and how we need to try and massage whatever rollout we're doing, but I often wish that everybody who wrote about the theater could talk about design in a more elevated way. Often people will say "the minimal set design" and I think "Omigod! If you only knew! When it's minimal, it has to be perfect!" you know? So they are our unsung heroes; they make all of our work better. But we want to get through this month first and just see. We're gonna take a little moment and talk about it and then see who is interested in pushing forward with it.

The lineup of participating playwrights has been notably diverse, which is something that's been emblematic of the Magic for years. Does it still require a concerted effort on your part to seek out such a wide variety of voices, or is that something that more or less naturally occurs for you at this point?

Well, that is a tricky question because nothing more or less occurs at this point in terms of diversity and inclusion. That doesn't just happen at this point. I will say... [hesitates]

Another way of phrasing that is I feel like you're much more successful at that than most theaters -

Thank you.

and I was struggling with how to ask you this without dissing other companies. But it's something I think you succeed at so I'm trying to get a sense of how much effort it is versus are you now well enough known for diversity that artists from under-represented communities naturally seek you out?

You know, I think that might be true and I also think that my [previous] comment is about that we're still not there. We haven't arrived for women and for writers and directors and designers of color; we're just not there. But for us, for me, it's been a natural [thing]. All the work that you see here, that's the best work to my mind. These are the best writers and the best plays, they hit the level of rigor and substance that I [want to see]. Time is valuable and when people gather, we take that seriously. In communing together, everybody's made an effort to be there and it needs to be for a reason. When you look at substantive, adventurous work, I don't know how it wouldn't be diverse because there is such an extraordinary amount of great writing out there. Our job, my job, is to seek excellence and adventure and that naturally has meant that it's a diverse rollout of extraordinary voices, of color, of people who are in the LGBTQ world. That has been about seeking excellence. We have no grant for diversity. Yes, it's the right thing to do, but this is about excellence. There is an extraordinary amount of sublime work out there and it would be a crime not to champion it, develop it, produce it. And so that's all we've done.

Obviously, we're all struggling to varying degrees these days just getting through this pandemic. As Magic's Artistic Director, what has been the most challenging thing for you personally?

Well, the macro answer would be the challenge of how we stay alive and have enough resources to launch and serve next season's playwrights, three extraordinary women, three extraordinary world premieres. We were all taken from one another by this pandemic and obviously we're doing the right thing, but it was in March so for the Magic we were smack dab in the middle of our fiscal year. The most challenging thing has been working in tandem with Kevin Nelson, our General Manager, and Sonia Hernandez, our Associate Artistic Director, and our incredible board. Six months of fund-raising and ticket revenue and our annual major fund raiser being highjacked?! That is real; no income is real. The challenge of keeping the artists paid and the small, dedicated staff paid has been very tricky. We still are paying them, but we also have put in the two emergency loan programs through the CARES act, the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. We're waiting to hear, my board has been incredibly generous in elevating some gifts and we've had a couple of funders who have made special gifts. We also have a strategic plan which we have not deployed yet, but we're ready. We know how to be nimble from 2008, but that's big.

And then the personal answer is just like "These were supposed to be my last two months!" April and May I was supposed to be in rehearsal and directing and having a moment, being celebrated at the gala. [laughs] So I was looking forward to this beautiful, easy sort of transition and instead I'm kind of leaving the way I came in. It's reminiscent of 2008, trying to figure out how to lean on our stakeholders while not leaning on them because we're all going through this treacherous thing and obviously the stock market's in the toilet, so I'm really trying to imagine what the new normal should be and can be and what that means. To use an Elizabeth Warren quote, it's not nibbling around the edges, but what are the bold ways that we might all have to alter how we do what we do - while still honoring that if you don't have the alchemy of a writer's voice in an actor's body bouncing off of an audience, it's not exactly theater? How are we gonna hold those tenets and still make something, given this new world, for at least this year, year and a half, of transition. But I think that we were [already] leaning that way. I didn't think the robust economy was gonna last forever and we all need to be nimble and creative. And where better to do it than in the theater ecosystem where you have the greatest minds and the most creative artists? I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what comes out of this.

Finally, I wanted to take a page from the Far Apart Art format and ask what are you currently doing? Do you have any daily rituals? Where are you finding solace and inspiration these days?

This is where I feel incredible gratitude. My partner and I are taking hourlong hikes every morning. I'm a New Yorker, a transplant, and I'll round the corner and I'll still be gobsmacked by the view, you know? If I were still in my apartment in Hell's Kitchen, I wouldn't have this kind of immediate access to nature. We're so lucky and I'm trying to be grateful for those things and for the beauty of nature surrounding us here in the Bay Area. We've started to break it up so that we don't just do Bernal Hill; now we're going into Glen Park, but leaving from our house and just spending an hour in nature. Sometimes we talk the whole way, and of course we have this crazy rescue dog so we take the dog, but sometimes we don't talk at all.

My 19-year-old daughter is home, and all three of us love food, so we're cooking up a storm. We're probably drinking a little bit more than we usually do, my partner and I. We're being kinder to ourselves and more generous and not being so rigorous, and it makes the days kind of fly by. I mean, we're all working, we're all in separate places in the house, my daughter upstairs, my partner in his little office that he just made out in the garage overlooking the garden and I'm in the kitchen, but around 5:30 we all start to knock off. It's been lovely to try and be present in a way that we can't be when we're moving so quickly in our regular lives. I'm hoping to take a page from this into the future. I hope that it doesn't have to be an international pandemic to make us slow down and be a little more present.

[Additional information about Magic Theatre and Far Apart Art can be found at magictheatre.org.]

To post a comment, you must register and login.