Oregon ArtsWatch: Portland’s financially plagued Artists Repertory Theatre has laid off Jeanette Harrison, its artistic director of only a year, just two months after announcing the suspension of its 2023-24 season because of money woes. The company has also been involved in a prolonged and expensive renovation of its home space and had been presenting shows in other locations.
2 comments:
When I first saw the title of this article, I genuinely thought that the reason for the lay off would be due to somehting the artistic director, JEanette Harrison did- whether it be not doing her job properly or something else. However, I was quite shocked to see that the reason was due to financial difficulties, and it is horrible to think it happened only a year after her role. It makes sense that they are having lay offs after canceling their 2023-2024 season due to financial difficulties, but I feel that laying off the artistic director is a huge jump to start at. Reading that she was hired after a national search, then also wasn't able to even direct a play at Artists Rep is crazy. I feel as though if they went all through that trouble to find someone that valuable and thorough, they wouldn't let her go se easily. I am wondering about how Jeanette took it, and if she expressed any qualms with the decision.
Laying off an artistic director feels like a crazy and drastic action to me personally. How I look at theatre structure is that the artistic director is the head of the ship, the buck stops with them and that is an incredibly hard and taxing job. I do find it interesting that the termination is only going to last a year but what can really be done in a year with no leader? This is going to put more pressure on people who are not normally as high up on the metaphorical food chain and add undo pressure and stress to their daily work. They also have the added pressure, if they are friends with the newly terminated artistic director who is returning to the company, to keep their organization alive when it is clearly struggling in the first place. I will be interested over the next few months what this corporation is going to do to bounce back without a head and leader. I also am curious if this step makes any of the investors nervous because you never want to see the head of an organization break a sweat let alone step back for a year
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