What does the artistic director position entail?
My job includes choosing plays and participants. I may choose a director, or I may direct the production myself. I curate, setting the tone of the place and representing the theater, and negotiating when there is friction among different areas of the theater — usually an artistic clash of wills. People usually have good reason when they are upset, and the artistic director has to make decisions. I take on some fund-raising responsibilities, work with playwrights, and read a lot of work.
What makes Undermain special?
One thing is that we have a resident company of artists — have since about year two. The actors and designers [and other members of the troupe] have an artistic home here. With the resident troupe, we have been able to develop original works and work with some remarkable, avant-garde, language-driven writers. The scripts are often rich in language and poetry. [The theater itself] is small and interesting. In New York, they would just call it downtown theater — we call it wabi-sabi, which means the beauty in the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. The beauty of modesty, in other words. I like that it is in Deep Ellum, and that Deep Ellum is exactly seven minutes from my Lakewood home.
Have many successful productions started at the Undermain?
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