"They really fucked this up." That's how choreographer Karen Sherman describes the way the Southern Theater's board of directors has handled relations between the board and the large community of artists associated with the theater since July, when the board fired the Southern's founding artistic director, Jeff Bartlett.
When Sherman and other performers debuted their works earlier this month on the Southern's stage, it marked the first sign of a thaw in a bitterly cold war of words between the artists who make up the heart of the theater and the board of directors charged with securing the theater's future.
Mike Kooiman
Business as usual: The show goes on at the embattled Southern
Related Content
More About
For now, it appears the artists and the board have put most of their differences aside to keep the 2008-09 season alive. But getting to this point was a difficult and occasionally ugly process. As recently as a few weeks ago, the season's future was in doubt while artists slated to perform attempted to balance loyalty to Bartlett with the need to get paid and make a statement to the board.
Some artists were toying with the idea of keeping the Southern dark by refusing to sign their contracts. Eventually, they decided to let the theater's season—the last one Bartlett lined up—move forward.
"It was an agonizing decision," says Sherman, whose piece copperhead was the first dance performance this season. But she wanted to perform. "I might not fit into their future vision. I wanted to grab that opportunity."
Patricia Speelman, the Southern's president, says the pieces for a successful season are now beginning to fall into place. She says she is in the process of finalizing contracts for the rest of the season, and that she has even received some positive feedback from the artists who have performed so far. Just a few weeks ago, such good news coming from top brass at the Southern would have been unthinkable. But this period of working together for the season is clearly more of a ceasefire than a peace treaty.
Initially angry about how Bartlett's departure came without notice or a reason from the board, artists turned their ire into calls for broad changes to the theater's operation. The board's move also raised eyebrows among the Southern's funders.
"I won't make a statement on behalf of the Jerome Foundation, but I'll make a statement as an individual member of the Twin Cities arts community," says Jerome Foundation program officer Eleanor Savage. "I think that the way the situation was handled with Jeff Bartlett lacked all integrity."
Vickie Benson, program director of the arts at the McKnight Foundation, which is a major source of funds for the Southern and contributes to general operating costs and dance and choreography fellowships, echoes Savage's thoughts.
"Talk about a textbook way to not do something," Benson says. "That alone was so poorly communicated that of course people are going to rise up."
And rise up they did. Teetering between rage and mourning, artists demanded that the Southern's board members explain their actions. In the early contentious face-offs, the artists vented to the board, which, forced into self-defense tactics, didn't win many supporters.
"The response was so dismissive," Sherman says. "Most of the board seemed to feel that we were trying to be agitators."
"The board said, 'We understood that we would lose some artists with [firing Bartlett],'" says Charles Campbell, co-founder of the Skewed Visions performance company. "And the implication was that it was all right with them."
Some artists think this sort of friction between the performers and the financially minded board is the result of fundamentally different ideologies, in addition to the controversy over letting Bartlett go.
"The present board knows less about the history, culture, philosophy, and relationships that the Southern constitutes," says dance artist and administrator John Munger, who was one of Bartlett's original artistic partners at the Southern in 1979. "I think this board is inclined in a direction that somebody might describe as 'corporate.' Whereas the artists, the audiences, and, in general, the constituency [of the Southern] is what might be described as 'not for profit.' It's oil and water. They don't mix."
Unsatisfied by the board's reaction in their meetings, Campbell, Sherman, and hundreds of other artists united in an effort to bring change to the Southern.
The artists formed an email listserve called the Southern Community. Ideas were bandied across cyberspace and a few were brought to the board. One was that a mediator of sorts, a "scribe," as the artists called it, keep track of the board's and artists' interactions and feelings. The board rejected the idea. Artists asked for four artists to be on the board. The board countered with two spots.
Soon it became clear that the artists were confronting the board about a lot more than one man's dismissal. Bartlett, for his part, hired a lawyer and stayed mum on the subject of his departure. Eventually he reached a settlement with the board, but on advice of his lawyer, his lips are still sealed on the matter of his abrupt termination.
But members of the board are making no apologies for being business-minded. They point out that by focusing on the bottom line, they've greatly reduced the theater's long-term debt. After renovation costs racked up about $300,000 in debt, the board over the past two years has trimmed that to about $90,000.
