BLOG: The Job Interview of a Lifetime

The Right Man (or Maybe Possibly Woman) For the Job Ever since Joe Dowling announced that he would be stepping down as the Artistic Director of the Guthrie after next season, There has been endless speculation about who will fill ol' Joe's shoes when he's shuffled off the Twin Cities stage. In a lot of ways, the search for a new Guthrie AD is like the search for Target's new CEO (except Dowling didn't preside over the largest consumer data breach recorded so far). They are both large corporations with long histories, big brand recognition and forever-tenuous financial circumstances. They both have a lot of people looking over their shoulders, ready to rain down criticism for whatever choice they make. And, just as Target has been casting its net outside of the company to find a new leader with the help of a third-party consulting firm, so, too, has the Guthrie. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the job listing of a life time: "Artistic Director, The Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, MN". The Guthrie's leadership structure makes this a very hard position to fill. A typical large theater company will have both an Artistic Director who looks after the art, and an executive director who makes sure the art gets paid for. It's probably more complicated and nuanced than that, but in general, large corporations recognize the difference between a CEO, who maintains the vision of the company, and a CFO, who signs off of the spending reports. Right now, the Guthrie does not. Dowling currently holds the sole executive position at the theater factory. So, this is a nearly impossible job to fill, with an overwhelming workload requiring so many disparate skills that it is virtually guaranteed that the final selection will at best perform in mediocrity and at worst struggle to keep his head above water. The Wrong Man (or Maybe Possibly Woman) For the Job I figured, "Hey, who has a long history of constantly struggling to keep their heads above water? The leaders of small theater companies!" As I am already an an Artistic Director, I figured I would have a leg up on the job, so I put in an application. Now, I admit, I'm a pretty "out of the box" candidate for this job. So "out of the box", in fact, that the initial response was, "Who the hell are you, and how did you get this number? Stop calling us!" So, I submitted a new resume and application. Now, we all know that we tend to fudge resumes a little, and, as it turns out, there may have been a small typo on mine that may or may not have listed by name as "Diane Paulus". At any rate, I scored an interview, which I also illegally recorded and will now reprint for you: The Interview INTERVIEWER: Welcome, Ms. Paulus! I saw your production of Pippin on Broadway, and it was… You're not Diane Paulus. DEREK: How do you know? Have you met her? INT: You're not even a woman. DEREK: Wow. Sexism already. Now that I've got you tagged on that, shall we proceed with the lawsuit or the interview? INT: Sigh… Fine. Sit down. DEREK: I prefer to stand, actually. It helps me seem more important than you, which will be helpful for this job, don't you think? INT: OK… Can you tell us a little about yourself? DEREK: Well, after winning the 2013 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical and being named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People", I thought to myself- INT: That's obviously Diane Paulus' biography. DEREK: Exactly. INT: What? DEREK: Listen, we can argue over who is and who is not Diane Paulus all day, or we can talk about some of the big ideas I have for the Guthrie. INT: All right, what are they? DEREK: For starters, look at this review of 2014 theater in the Star Tribune. INT: 2014 is only half over. How is that even possible? DEREK: I agree with you, but we need to look at the bigger picture. These critics only mentioned one show at the Guthrie. And it wasn't even a Guthrie show! It was a Penumbra show that they brought in. So, here's what I'm thinking: no more "Guthrie" shows. The company doesn't produce anything in-house. We just bring in other people's completed work and just repackage it a little. We'll be like the Buzzfeed of the theater world. INT: Don't you think that would bother our current audience? DEREK: Don't worry about them! We'll be reaching so many new people with the broadcasts, it won't matter. INT: Broadcasts? DEREK: Yeah, everyone and the mother is beaming broadcasts of live plays to other theaters instead of, you know, actually producing theater. We could even do that on the internet and really punch up the Buzzfeed thing. Think about it: "What This Danish Prince Does Next Will Shock You!" INT: But doesn't broadcasting plays send the message that there is no value to watching live performance? DEREK: Oh, you bet it does! That's what's exciting about it. See, we're reaching peak entertainment saturation. Entertainment is so easy to access that it's become a commodity, like corn. We need to embrace that! Let's keep shoveling out that corn! INT: But the Guthrie has a physical presence. Actual facilities- DEREK: Yeah, the blue thing. And I am pissed that Joe already got to do the big crazy building already. Kind of stole my thunder. But, we can't stop there. We need to build more! If some rinky-dink outfits like the Theatre Garage or Park Square can get new facilities, so can we. INT: But the company just got- DEREK: And it's already old news! Never stop building expensive entertainment infrastructure! And if people won't pay for it, we threaten to leave. INT: You really think that would work? DEREK: It worked for the Vikings INT: So, we're indiscriminately building capacity and filling it with work we didn't actually produce, all the while reserving our right to broadcast said work all over the world and forcing other people to pay for it. DEREK: Yes! We're building the internet in real life! Keep shoveling that corn, baby! But it needs something else to make it complete. INT: Pornography? DEREK: No, but I like the way you're thinking. No, we need racism. I read this really interesting article by Rob Callahan recently about how it's fashionable again. INT: Wow. That's just… Wow. DEREK: I know. It's perfect. INT: I don't think you actually read that article. Couldn't you just produce work created by and featuring people of different ethnicities and backgrounds? DEREK: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get crazy, now. I mean, I guess you could be multicultural and sensitive and all, but where's the controversy in that? Controversy is what sells. Doesn't matter what they're saying, as long as they're talking about you. The first thing I'd do is get David Mamet on staff, commission a new work, then cast a man as a woman's character since he's horrible at writing for women anyway, and just watch him go ballistic. The diatribe he'd publish in his next memoir would be the most amazing publicity ever. INT: Well, these are all very, uh… interesting ideas, but I think we're out of time- DEREK: Just one more thing. INT: Make it quick. DEREK: All my previous ideas have been the hilarious extensions of the actual ideas that men have usually brought to the theater table: spectacle, controversy, attention-grabbing, unchecked growth, the building of hollow monuments… These are the ideas that the powerful come up with when they see their power start to wane… INT: What is that music? Did you bring a stereo with you to play inspirational music for this speech? DEREK: But we cannot approach the future by continually looking to past. Men may have had control of history, but I believe that women are poised to have control of the future. Looking at the Guthrie's season, I see more female playwrights than I have seen there before. But there are so many more! And besides. Where are the directors? The leaders? If we want to truly revolutionize this theater, and keep it from lapsing into a tomb to old, white men that has merely been dressed up in aluminum skin and lights, then we must fundamentally change the leadership. Not just with a new face, but with a new perspective. Someone who has been forced to live on the margins of leadership before, but who will now take the reins of power with a hunger and a zeal and a pent-up creativity that will be unmatched by any man who came before. I believe that a woman should be put in charge of the Guthrie. It is time. It is right. It is our future. Thank you. INT: Get the hell out of my office.