The Seattle Times: When Gus Menary signed on as the new artistic director of Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre, he never imagined he’d spend his first season at the storied theater company miles away from the stage.
Yet when the pandemic shut down live performances starting last spring, that’s exactly what happened.
1 comment:
This article was definitely interesting to read as it seems very chaotic and unfortunate to these theater companies of all the changes they have to go through. Changing leadership is always difficult, especially in a big company like the Book-It Repertory Theater, because the entire staff of the theater is so used to one way. And in order for someone new as big as the next artistic director to come along, there are a lot of things people might be hesitant against because they are so used to the style of the previous director. So in that case, I think it is great timing for them to be changing high positions right before the pandemic. First of all, Gus Menary is much younger. He can understand the circumstances of the pandemic and make choices possibly better than the previous directors. And because of the unusual circumstances that no one has experienced yet before, people cannot compare him to the previous directors and also start to build trust for Menary about the entire process. Menary would have to do things differently from the previous artistic directors, and people understand this. So, in that sense, Menary now has the ability to do things his way, in the given pandemic circumstances, and become his own artistic director with no pressure of being like his predecessors. And when the pandemic eventually is over, he will be able to proceed with his style.
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