Theatre Bay Area Executive Director Brad Erickson To Step Down

After 18 years as Executive Director of the greater Bay Area membership service nonprofit Theatre Bay Area, Brad Erickson, 62, has announced that he will step down at the end of 2021 to return to the East Coast and pursue a new endeavor. Erickson informed the Board of Directors of his decision in the spring, and the Board has begun a search process for new leadership, with plans to announce the selection of a national search firm shortly, selecting a new leader in early 2022.

As part of the process, TBA will undertake an organizational assessment to evaluate its programs and leadership, its role in the performing arts field, advocacy, organizational structure and other aspects to better serve its members and the public. Erickson and his husband, Brian Protheroe, will be pursuing their long-time dream of creating an artist residency near Brad's family home in Charleston, SC.

"All of us at Theatre Bay Area and in the theater and arts communities owe Brad tremendous gratitude for his nearly two decades of dedication and leadership," commented Debbie Chinn, TBA Board President. "Brad has been an inspiring force during a time of great changes and challenges for the theater field locally and nationally, and has consistently brought us together, strengthening us through unity. The Board of Directors embraces this transition as an opportunity to deeply evaluate every aspect of Theatre Bay Area at a critical time in history with much at stake for artists and arts organizations. An important priority in our process is to select executive leadership that reflects experience and commitment to the Bay Area's singular diversity of arts and cultures. We thank Brad for the solid foundation he has been instrumental in creating and maintaining so that TBA can build a future that prioritizes representation, responsiveness and action."

Erickson reflected on his two decades of work: "I know I will miss the Bay Area and this arts community tremendously. It has been my immense privilege to serve the theatre artists and companies of this region for the past 18 years through my position at Theatre Bay Area. I am honored to have been part of an organization that has been dedicated to advancing this amazing community of theatre makers for the past 46 years and I wish TBA and our members every success for what I hope is many decades to come. I have worked with so many talented and devoted people at TBA over my tenure including staff members, board members, TBA members and members of our larger arts community. I am so grateful to them all and cherish what we have been able to accomplish together.

"I am excited to continue my work supporting artists and fostering community through the residency, and I look forward to continuing to work with arts leaders and their organizations through consulting and executive coaching. I'm also eager to devote more time to playwriting, my own artistic endeavor."

Since 2003, Brad Erickson has served as executive director of Theatre Bay Area-one of the nation's largest regional performing arts service organizations with more than 250 theater and dance company members in 11 Northern California counties and nearly 2,000 individual artist members. He has led Theatre Bay Area's effort to unite, strengthen, promote and advance the region's vibrant theatre community, a sector comprised of a wide variety of theater artists and organizations, from large regional theatres, to small, emerging companies to community theatre groups. Under Erickson's leadership, Theatre Bay Area has expanded its services and enhanced its impact and reputation, both in the Bay Area and nationwide. During his tenure, Erickson built a reputation for responsiveness to the needs of the field, crafting strategic approaches, often in collaboration with other leaders, for addressing the most urgent needs and opportunities of the sector. The innovative programming and leadership in arts advocacy advanced during his time at TBA has transformed the organization into a recognized leader in the arts sector, at the center of critical conversations impacting the field, regionally and nationally.

At TBA Erickson launched a raft of new programs meant to bolster the vitality of the field and to build audiences by inspiring lifelong participation in the arts. Some of these new initiatives include: 1.) Free Night of Theater which over the course of seven years delivered more than 35,000 free tickets to hundreds of theatre performances around the Bay Area and Sacramento attracting an audience that was strikingly younger and more diverse than the typical theatregoer; 2.) the Bay Area Audience Database, a shared resource with consumer data on 1.8 million Bay Area households drawn from 80 arts organizations around the region; 3.) commissioning a groundbreaking national study aimed at measuring the deeply felt, intrinsic impact of theater experiences on audiences (Erickson published the study's findings in the book Counting New Beans and has been invited to speak on intrinsic impact at numerous convenings around the country); 4.) another national research initiative, Triple Play, conducted in partnership with New York's Theatre Development Fund and the National New Play Network, which explored the "triangular relationship" between artists, audiences, and arts organizations in an aim to peek interest in new work; and 5.) the establishment of the TBA Awards for outstanding achievement in theatre making, a hugely popular program celebrating the work of individual artists and professionally-oriented theatre companies around the Bay Area.

Motivated by strong personal passions and TBA's strategic plan, Erickson vigorously engaged in advancing public policy that supports the arts and connects all Californians to the state's rich cultural resources. He served for six years as president and five years as treasurer of California Arts Advocates and Californians for the Arts, two sister, statewide nonprofit advocacy organization for the arts. He also served for nine years as California's state captain for Americans for the Arts (AFTA), leading the state's delegation to Washington, DC, for AFTA's Advocacy Day each spring. At the local advocacy level, he co-founded Arts Forum SF, served as the chair of the Mid-Market Project Area Committee for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and served on the Board of Stewards of Arts for a Better Bay Area as well as the steering committee behind San Francisco's Proposition E (which succeeded at the ballot in 2018, stabilizing and growing the city's arts funding). In June 2016, he was honored to receive AFTA's Alene Valkanas Award for Statewide Advocacy.

In recent years Erickson led Theatre Bay Area to respond to the growing concerns around systemic racism and bias in the theatre field by:

· Sponsoring TBA's Gender Parity Committee, which conducted and published research into opportunity gaps for female-identified theatre artists in the Bay Area.

· Providing opportunities for discussion and training in equity, diversity and inclusion at all of TBA's recent annual conferences and through periodic community workshops, town halls and convenings.

· Launching Theatres Advancing Social Change (TASC), a nine-month intensive training for 34 representatives from ten Bay Area theatres, plus TBA. The training was designed and led by Carmen Morgan and the renowned trainers at artEquity.

· Engaging EDI consultants to facilitate internal trainings and anti-bias audits at TBA with an aim of organizational transformation.

· Advancing diversity within TBA's staff and board. Today more than half of TBA's staff and board members identify as persons of color.

Reacting to the unprecedented crisis precipitated by Covid-19, Erickson led Theatre Bay Area to create the Performing Arts Workers Relief Fund. Partnering with fellow Bay Area service organizations Dancers Group and InterMusicSF, TBA has so far raised and awarded more than $600,000 to more than 750 Bay Area arts workers. Looking to the eventual end of the pandemic, Erickson had TBA join with three leading regional service organizations-Theatre Development Fund, ArtsBoston and the League of Chicago Theatres-to partner in a national study, conducted by the renowned researchers at WolfBrown, on the readiness of arts audiences to return to the theatre and concert hall. The study launched in May 2020 and will continue through the end of 2021.

Prior to coming to TBA, he served as executive director for the Northern California Supplier Development Council (NCSDC), an affiliate of the National Minority Supplier Development Council. There he directed that nonprofit association's programs to advance businesses owned by people of color. He is an award-winning playwright and actor. He holds a BFA in Acting from the Goodman School of Drama (now The Theatre School at DePaul University, Chicago).

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