Episode 1: Ethan Paulini and the Weathervane Theatre

Show Notes:

Lacey has a conversation with Ethan Paulini, Artistic Director of the Weathervane Theater & Out Of The Box Theatrics, actor, director, choreographer, educator, writer, arts administrator and acting coach. 

Ethan and I talk about all the things pandemic, re-opening, social justice, anti-racism, losses in 2020 and hope in 2021. 

Want to know how the Weathervane was able to have an in-person Fall 2020 season? Ethan's anti-racist intention in how he combines roles in the audition packets for the repertory season? Patrons reactions to the theater's statement on social justice? Take a listen.

Get in touch at whiletheapplauseispaused@gmail.com

Ethan's website

Ethan’s actor coaching website

Weathervane Theater’s website

Out Of The Box Theatrics website

Actors Equity Association website

Transcript:

Lacey: [00:00:00] Hey listeners. Welcome to While The Applause Is Paused ,conversations with regional theater makers,

I'm your host Lacey Tucker. Join me as I talk with artistic leaders around the country about what's challenging and constricting or creative and exciting, or all of the above in the pandemic. Curtain up on some real conversation for these real times.

This week, we welcome Ethan Paulini producing artistic director of the Weathervane theater in Whitefield, New Hampshire and associate artistic director of Out of The Box Theatrics inNew York City.

I'm so excited to bring you the first episode of While The Applause Is Paused and to welcome Ethan Paulini. Ethan is a director, actor, choreographer, educator writer, and arts administrator. New York City and regional work includes Roundabout Theater Company, New York Theater Workshop, Spontaneous Evolution Ensemble, Arkansas Rep, northern Stage, arts Center of Coastal Carolina, Provincetown Theater, the Alhambra, vineyard Playhouse, and many others.

He's also a popular acting and career coach in Manhattan and the resident director of Reel Artistry, a video production company providing great services to actors and incidentally, how I first met Ethan. And I also want to give a shout out to Reel Artistry's'. amazing founder, Kenny Metzger. Hey, Kenny! Ethan is in his fourth season as the producing artistic director at the Weathervane Theater in Whitefield, Vermont.

He has also served the Weathervane as intern director, co-artistic director, director, choreographer, and AEA company member. He is also the associate artistic director of the off-Broadway theater company Out Of The Box Theatrics, where he produced, directed and choreographed a site-specific production of the musical Baby, starring the legendary Alice Ripley. And put it in your calendar that Baby is being repressed in November of this year. Ethan does so many things, we could have had 10 different conversations, but in this episode, we focus on Ethan's leadership at the Weathervane Theater, since it's a regional theater and well that's in the title of the podcast. So onto my conversation with Ethan Paulini.

Hello, Ethan. Paulini. It is such it's. Hi, it's so great to have you here. Thank you. 

Ethan: [00:02:22] Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. This is fun. 

Lacey: [00:02:25] Tell me about the mission of the theater and the community that you serve, and historically what you have offered that community and then we'll, we'll get to the pandemic.

Ethan: [00:02:35] Sure. So the Weathervane was founded in 1966 by a pair of gentlemen from Boston. Well, from that had connections in Boston, they were teachers at Emerson and connected to that community and would go up to New Hampshire the white mountains in the summer. And there was already a theater established in Whitefield called the Chase Barn.

And it had been there for 30 years. And a woman who ran it Lucy Chase Sparks was at the point where she wanted to retire and said, I feel terrible because there's no one to sort of carry on the tradition of live theater here in this town. And it's become sort of a hallmark of this town. So Tom Haas and Gibbs Murray both founded the Weathervane Theater.

And like I said, we're entering our 56th season. And the mission is really to be a cultural and social center for a very specific rural population. It's way up in the White Mountains, about an hour from the Canadian border. It's beautiful, but very sort of isolated, but there is the organization has cultivated a relationship to the community in which it really compliments everyone and people really look

forward to the season. What's unique about us is that we are the only remaining, I guess this was more common when they started, the only remaining Equity alternating repertory theater, which it used to be that over the course of eight weeks in July and August, there would be seven productions and they would quite literally run simultaneously.

So it was Monday night, you might see Kiss Me Kate. And Tuesday night you might see Young Frankenstein and Wednesday might be Moon Over Buffalo.  We still follow that model but we've expanded a little bit into the fall season. So in 2021, we'll produce 11 shows over the course of 15 weeks. You know, like I said, the mission really is, to... the reason that I am so committed and connected to this particular organization, I started there as a member of the Equity Company in 2012, and then came back in 2017 to run their Intern Program. At that point. my, a lot of my focus just in general had shifted more to directing, education, admin, stuff along those lines. And so getting to go back there again as a performer in 2017, but also to run the educational arm of their programming was really enticing to me. And then, you know, circumstances as they were led to me being hired as the artistic director in 2018. And my personal mission is a belief that everyone should have access to live theater, that it shouldn't just be confined to the people who live in big cities, even more specifically, the people who live between 41st and 65th street in  Midtown Manhattan. I really believe that

Lacey: [00:05:06] Very specific group. 

Ethan: [00:05:08] Right. And and a lot of people, when they think of theater, they only think of Broadway and it's great. I love Broadway. I mean, I, I obviously that's a part of our community and, and something that is really essential. But for me, it's like, you can follow any of the lines thinking theater saves lives, theater provides outlets, theater provide safe havens. It provides opportunity for people to explore who they are, explore who they are in relationship to their community. All of those things are so important. And to me, it shouldn't just because you live in a rural place or a place that maybe is a little more off the beaten path.

There shouldn't be... we're not going to serve the art form in the longterm if we aren't exposing everyone to it, because there's, it's just as likely that someone who goes to see a children's theater production in a rural community is as taken with the, with the potential of participating in it as someone who gets the opportunity to go see a big Broadway show. I think that I'm trying to enhance that. The mission has always been, that has always been to provide access to the, to the performing arts in this particular County. And I think I'm hoping to just sort of expand that during my time there. 2021 will be my fourth season as artistic director. And I think we're already starting to see some of those changes. You know, we're doing things to provide access to people. We're doing things to make sure that the ticket price, or even a level of understanding of what the programming is doesn't alienate anyone. 

Lacey: [00:06:32] I want to hear more about that, I'm going to put a pin in that, 

Ethan: [00:06:35] so that's who we are. 

Lacey: [00:06:37] You made me think of something. When you said people off the beaten path should shouldn't be denied access to this art form and that it doesn't serve the art form. I think some I'm thinking about my hometown, which is the hometown of the Adirondack Theater Festival.

And that they built something doing new works, which seemed like who in upstate New York and in this small community would be interested in new works and shows they haven't heard of how would you possibly draw people in, right. If they're not used to the Playwrights Horizons of the world and it's been wildly successful, which is incredible.

And I think really says something about the community. And I hear you saying that as well. Sometimes the people that are really in it, we don't give people enough credit just because they live wherever they live, that they're not going to be supporters and fans and critical thinkers. And then what you said, I'd love to hear more about that, that, you know, how do you bridge when there is a gap? How do you bridge it? 

Ethan: [00:07:27] Yeah, that's an excellent point. And I think that there's a lot of assumptions made. I think about what programming is possible and what programming is possible based on the geographical location. And again, since I've been there, that's been a personal goal is to expand as a repertory company.

There was an expectation, like when I came back in 2017, they were doing Hairspray already for the second time. And I inherited part of a season in 2018 and they were doing Joseph for the fourth time in 15 years. And in my head, I thought there's so many great pieces and so many good stories to tell. And so many artists to cultivate relationships with, to tell the stories that we really have to sort of expand it and not assume that people won't show up. And I remember announcing 2019 the season. And I really, the only big title that I had was Sister Act. And other than that, I was doing Bright Star and I was doing Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, and I was doing Curious Incident and there was definitely a little bit of a pushback from the subscribers:"

"I don't know any of these shows. I've never heard of these shows". And I said, well, okay. So, but would you trust what we do? So give us a chance. And then at the end of the season, we do sort of a season recap celebration. And I even made jokes about, I played Man In Chair cause we had done Drowsy Chaperone and I made a joke about how in that monologue, when he sits and talks to the audience and says, you know, I hate theater, Oh, please let it be short and let it be happy and let it be all these things, I said, I made a joke about the theater and said, please let, let them do something I've heard of. And I would tell them like a show, like Bright Star is going to be your favorite show that you just haven't heard of yet. And lo and behold, that was other than Sister Act the biggest hit of the season. And now going into season four, there's definitely a level of trust that has been built up.

And, and they're, they are trusting that, you know, we're doing The Mountaintop in the fall. They're, you know, they're definitely. Even though we're going to give them Hello, Dolly, and we're doing that. And that'll be great and a great way to kick the season off. And they'll also the same people who show up for Dolly will also show up for The Mountaintop and hopefully that'll expand conversations and it will expand everyone's  acceptance and acknowledgement of what theater can do.

Lacey: [00:09:35] Do you think that you've enticed new patrons since, since you've changed the programming? 

Ethan: [00:09:40] Definitely. I think so one of the things that I found that wasn't actually working, and this is about finding a balance was a lot of our audience tended to be  wealthier, older. I mean like so many theaters, but wealthier, older, sort of vacation, second home. People that live in Boston or New York and go up to the White Mountains, just like they go to Cape Cod or the Hamptons. So we would find that certain types of shows would do really well. A certain type, you know, a show that either offered some level of nostalgia for people in their like 50 to 80 year old range or

something that was honestly a little bit more sophisticated and not childlike. Right? I mean, Sister Act is, is also kind of an example. That's definitely, you know, it's adult and there's mentions that there's sexual situations and there's drugs and crime. So it's not just a family show. And those types of shows always did better than say doing something like The Little Mermaid.

And it wasn't that there weren't kids up there. It wasn't that there aren't families that live there. It's just, they're not going to go to the theater because they can't spend $170 on a night out with their family. I think that what we've done is what, what I hope to do is create programming, and with the opportunity of 11 shows, you can kind of do that, where you do something like The Mountaintop, you do something like Bright Star you do something like Amadeus that we're doing this season. That sort of speaks directly to those people who are perhaps a little bit more expendable income. 

Lacey: [00:11:07] For whom it's their favorite movie, just saying, 

Ethan: [00:11:10] right, right. Oh yeah. But then it's like a masterpiece. 

Lacey: [00:11:15] Yeah, it's incredible. 

Ethan: [00:11:16] But then like also provide some, some family programming for everyone that has some accessibility to it that we provide, you know, and we got a grant to be able to provide. So I want to make sure I'm answering your specific question. Yes. I do think we have found many more patrons in both the tourism trade that comes in the fall to look at the  leaf peepers as they call them, which is a little bit more of a sophisticated baby boomer generation.

But then in addition, like one of the things I'm really proud of our new development director wrote a successful grant proposal to the Tillotson foundation, which one of the things that the money is earmarked for is to be able to provide a pair of free tickets to every rising senior in the school system  throughout the County.

And that to me is what's going to keep make it sustainable, because like I said, those 50 to 80 year old subscribers. Sure. They're going to be your subscribers God willing as long as they can be. But you have to have people coming up and refreshing that. And you know, for me, I also am trying to come up with programming that will speak to them as well.

We're doing American Idiot, then the newer subscribers are in sort of my age range, the thirties and forties. And we have to do things that are going to make them feel nostalgic and interested. And maybe it will be okay if they bring their teenage kids with them and then the kids go, okay. That was pretty cool.

Lacey: [00:12:33] Yeah. 

We're doing things like Buyer And Seller. The little there's a little town of there just had their first Pride celebration. So with Buyer And Seller and Kinky Boots we're sort of talking to that community and trying to get that community involved. And then same thing with the Mountaintop. New Hampshire is, is demographically extremely white.

But in that particular County, the highest, the fastest growing segment of the population, there are black Americans moving into that County. And so we want to be telling those stories too, you know, that's important. 

Okay. So the time capsule portion of this conversation is we are here in January of 2021.

It's been going on a year since theater shut down. You did not shut down completely, which we'll get to, but what happened in March of 2020? How did you know what to do? What did you, do? You know? What, what was it like for you? 

Ethan: [00:13:21] Yeah, so it was kind of an interesting. The timing of it was really interesting because we were completed A1s here in New York which is part of our casting process. And we had also done our EPAs and ECCs in New York. Normally we do those in April. I was finding that April was too late, so I moved them to February. So we had had that, we had an idea of where our casting was going, but we still had to go to some more of the conferences.

We had to go to NETCs, we had to go to Strawhats, . And then we also, Equity requires that you have a local audition and in Whitefield New Hampshire, there is no Equity population. So we have a concession that, that designates Boston as our local city, but we also have to have Boston EPAs every year.

So we were actually in Boston, me and my resident choreographer, Marissa Kirby were doing the NETC  doing our Boston EPAs. Our Boston EPAs were March 10th. And then, and then we, we actually went up to Whitefield because we had to have a board meeting and then we drove back on March 12th, the day everything's sort of shut down.

Lacey: [00:14:22] Yeah. 

Ethan: [00:14:23] And the, the irony of that was. Is that we weren't, we were sort of in the place we always are at, you know, at that point in the year. And with so much uncertain, we just kept planning because we don't open, we typically hadn't opened until the 4th of July. And so in my head, I'm thinking, okay, it's March, they're shutting Broadway down for a month. They're saying hopefully when it gets warmer, you know, all those things, they were trying to pass off to us as information. And so I, you know, I kept thinking we have time on our side. So with you know, knowing that we still had several months and hoping for sort of a swift resolution to everything we continue to plan.

And then it started to become about the conversation we had to have about... I was confident that we, that I knew that I had ideas of how to produce safely and, you know, that meant a lot of things from reduced capacity in the theater to limited staff and certain quarantine measures and all of that, but it really starts to become about the optics as well.

Cause there were, you know, you certainly don't want to come off as that one irresponsible theater, that's going to do theater no matter what. So we sort of made a bunch of pivots first pivot was to announce that we would be delaying the start of the summer season to August 1st, again, knowing that we had our first ever fall season plans.

So that sort of saved it for what we thought would save the season for us. And then it quickly became clear that really August 1st wasn't even going to be tenable or responsible. And we were obviously running into a lot of issues with Equity, the actors union. So we ultimately pivoted to creating  an entirely virtual Equity season that was going to just be live-streamed.

And then we were continuing with our interns program which are non-equity actors. So we were going to produce some outdoor theater for young audiences. And we were exploring the idea of some indoor productions. And so that's what we did. And we all, you know, many of us who were, who were in the company also have other wear other hats up there that we all sort of made the commitment that we would go up there June 1st and serve those other functions while also preparing and planning to try and produce something.

Ultimately, that is what also made, created a lot of the safety. What was deemed safe was the fact that we were all living together essentially as one household. And then in the middle of producing the virtual Equity season, that was being live streamed, we got our approval from Equity to be the first theater in the country to produce indoors with, with a live audience and with actors, multiple actors on stage. 

Lacey: [00:16:57] Yeah. That's really incredible because lots and lots of theaters put in applications that did not get approved. 

Ethan: [00:17:04] Yep. 

Lacey: [00:17:04] I think, you know, and I'm sure everybody was making extremely good faith efforts to create the right environment, to be able to produce live theater. I guess, to some degree what you had to work with, where you were located, the way your theater is set up, you know, how modernized it is, all of those things kind of made it work for you.

Ethan: [00:17:24] When I, I have done a couple of different conversations with for different panels and things of that nature talking about this. And really when I talk about all of the things that worked in our favor, it's like kind of a perfect storm. We were in a, we were in a, a very rural County that had at that up until that point, it only had about, I think it was when we got our approval, they had had 11 total cases and no deaths. And we hadn't. I know, and they hadn't had an active case since the last week of May. And this is now we were in August, so they could, you know, it just wasn't really prevalent in the community at that point. In addition, we happened to have on our Board the head of the, of the entire health care system up there in that county and his wife was an ICU nurse and they both agreed to come on as our medical staff our resident medical staff.

Equity requires you to have an infection control specialist. They, they required you to hire that. They don't specify that it has to be a doctor or anyone with any type of medical degree. It just has to, I mean, essentially to someone, it could be you or I, or anyone who. It has, is well versed in the rules that have been set forth by Equity and make sure that the actors and the producers are following them.

I know that we could have, like I said, we could have made that be anyone, but we happen to put forth this doctor as our, we called him our resident doctor. We put him on staff, he became an employee . That was one of the things a lot of other artistic directors who reached out to me when they read about our approval would say, who's your infection control specialist? What are you doing about all that? And I would say, Oh, well, we actually have a resident doctor and resident ICU nurse. And they were like, Oh, well, forget it. We can't get that. So that again, that was one of those parts of the perfect storm. And I think, and really, I think the one that's most amazing is that in October of 2019, when we committed to expanding into the fall, we had to do facility upgrades. We had to put in an HVAC system and cause previously we hadn't had that it's in the mountains. So it doesn't get particularly hot at night. So it was, you know, we didn't have heating and we didn't have air conditioning and we didn't have installation.

And when we decided that we were going to extend all the way into the middle of October, you know, it snows in October up there. So we had to do that and we did a capital campaign and put, you know, spent a ton of money to put an totally state-of-the-art brand new HVAC system in and had we not done that, that would have been the thing that completely washed any hopes of having a season. So to me, it was like, wow, what luck? That, that was the year we decided to do that. 

Lacey: [00:20:00] Yeah, that really is a perfect storm or a perfect, I don't know what the opposite of storm, a perfect rainbow or something. You know, with Teddy bears sliding down. And you did do your summer season virtually, and then you, you did do your, your fall season, your first fall season in person.

Tell me about from your perspective and from the community's perspective, from your patrons perspective, how did it, how did it all go and were there lessons learned? 

Ethan: [00:20:27] Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, I think there are like sort of positives and negatives to what we did this summer in terms of, so for me, I kept saying that this was about building the bridge to the other, to whatever the other side of this is. And that in, if we just shut the doors, we essentially were sticking our heads in the sand and not pushing ourselves as a staff and as a community that participates with these productions, pushing ourselves to be creative with it at all. And all that means is that we're not, we're only interested in, we're only interested in producing when all of the conditions are favorable and that's, to me that's not interesting or necessary.

Lacey: [00:21:09] Wow. I love that. I haven't heard anyone say that. And I think that's. So truthful and, and I don't know a lot of insights, so yeah. I mean,

Ethan: [00:21:17] thank you. It was, yeah, it was just, it was important to me that we, you know, there's some, there were so many things at stake, right? It was, it was the organization. Of course it was about paying those. We have, the reality is you have to pay those fixed bills. The reality is, is that we have cultivated a group of artists and a group of tech staff, and admin staff that rely on this as employment. And we all know that that's been a struggle for so many people as well. And then the other part of that is, you know, what happens?

We close? . We already have enough of a challenge as a seasonal organization, trying to keep awareness alive all year long. It was what would, so we would close at the end of August in 2019 and not open again until July of 2021. I just didn't think, I didn't know if the organization could sustain that.

And I didn't know, you know, and I don't think that that's ultimately what our audiences wanted either. So, you know, one of the, I think the, the challenges is that I, as I mentioned, it is an older demographic up there. So saying to them, you're going to watch these shows on your computer or on your smart TV that you might not even have, or know how to use was a challenge.

But then on the flip side of that, it also allowed us to expand our audience and our awareness. To the point where, you know, I would start every night with a little curtain speech where I would sort of welcome everyone to the show and say there are 208 people watching, or 208 links watching. So who knows how many people that is.

And they're everywhere. We have people watching in Germany, tonight, and people watching in Australia and people watching in Israel and people watching in San Francisco. So it was sort of like we made the best out of the scenario by expanding our reach. Which I was really proud of, even if there were, and there were plenty of, there were plenty of our normal patrons who didn't participate in the virtual because it wasn't something they had, they could connect to.

We have, we sort of made up for it by all the people who would otherwise not be able to access us way up in the White Mountains. 

Lacey: [00:23:17] Was there any profit to be made in it or it was really, a gift. 

Ethan: [00:23:20] Yeah, it was, you know, of course we were way down as, as everyone was, but that being said it did, you know, it did retain a lot of jobs and our costs were way down because we did do it with a limited staff.

So we weren't, we weren't in any position we aren't normally in as a nonprofit, you know, 

Lacey: [00:23:38] then you did your in-person season. So how was that? 

Ethan: [00:23:41] Yeah, it was great. Did three shows. They all ran in rep. They were with the company who had been there all summer doing the virtual stuff. We had audiences capped at 25% of our capacity.

So they were small audiences that they were so incredibly appreciative and grateful and supportive. 

Lacey: [00:23:57] And just to be clear, this was in, in your main, on your main stage, correct? 

Ethan: [00:24:01] Yeah, we were doing shows Wednesday through Saturday, every week and we did. Yeah, we did we did Little Shop of Horrors, which is sort of our, you know, centerpiece. And then we did a musical review called The World Goes Round, and then we did a play, a four-person play called Miracle on South  Division Street. All of them were incredibly well received. All of them sold, you know, sold out at what capacity we were allowed to sell them out. Okay. So, you know, that would, yeah, that had been, I will say that had been something I had seen in a lot of the  sort of discussion forums, you know?

"Oh, well, we're ready to get back, but our audience is ready to come back into the theater". And it was kind of amazing that, you know, I, while I don't think if we had been allowed to sell 250 seats, I don't think we would have been, I think we still would've only been selling, you know, 40 or 50, but but, the fact that it was so consistent and that it didn't matter, you know, we knew Little Shop would be popular, but for everything to, to be doing well, it was really, it was pretty encouraging for, for going forward, you know? 

Lacey: [00:25:01] Yeah. I don't know every statistic, you know, I know that we're standing room only people really wanted to see Godspell, for example, in the Berkshires this summer.

Ethan: [00:25:09] Yeah. 

Lacey: [00:25:09] And they had no trouble filling their seats. And it's also, it's a good point about even if you had been allowed or you had exhibited poor judgment, which of course you didn't and said, everyone come and fill the seats. People wouldn't have, people are scared. I mean, there was just a thing in Broadway Briefing a day ago, looking at the opinions of theater goers, and even with a vaccine, people want masks.

Ethan: [00:25:32] Yeah. I think that, I think that's responsibility on the part of both the producer and the audience. Like you said that people weren't ready to, but it was, you know, it was kind of amazing because it was always like we would sell out up to our cap and then maybe get one or two people, one or two parties that we would have to turn away or put on a wait list, but it was never like, oh, we've sold all 60 seats that are available. And now we have a wait list of a hundred people. It was always, we have 60 seat sold, and we have maybe three or four people who aren't going to be able to get in and that's for the good of everyone. And so it was sort of, the demand was right, where, where we were.

Lacey: [00:26:11] That's really kind of cool. You have another season coming up of course. And you're, I'm sure starting to get going on that. What do you foresee it looking like, do you already have a plan in place? Is it something that's that could shift as things shift, how you deal with all of that changes, you know, over a year later, I mean, By the time we go into the summer, it's going to be a year and a half of trying to figure all this out.

Ethan: [00:26:33] Yeah. We're definitely planning for season 56, which will all things, if all things go as planned, we'll open on June 26 this year. There's a lot of considerations going into it. We're following all of the safety protocols that we had in place for 2020, we're hoping that vaccine availability will have made a big difference, if not for our employees, at least for our audiences by then. Luckily again, because the population is rural and older, I've actually had a couple of Board members telling me that they've seen access to the vaccine up in that neck of the woods to be pretty, pretty consistent, and that they feel confident that by June there'll be in a good place that, you know, a lot of there's a lot of we're ahead in some ways, because so much of what we plan, we basically took our summer season for 2020 and postponed it to 2021.

So there are so many pieces of that puzzle that are already in place, which is really fortunate, but that, of course, like you said, there's so much uncertainty that anything can change just as it did last year. So I have, you know, I have plans A through probably M or N I would say at this point, but you know, there's alternative, there's alternative titles, there's reduced scheduling, there's smaller staff. There's smaller casts shows, things like that. You know, there are certain shows like Kinky Boots and Amadeus that I know will be very popular. That if we're still in a place where we can't get some more closer to capacity, like if we're still at a place where you can only welcome 50 or 60 people into the actual theater, I probably will, will not do those.

I want to save those for when they can be, you know, attended as they would traditionally be attended. So I have have sort of backup shows for that because a lot of times, you know, that's also the other part of it. A lot of times we have the shows like a Kinky Boots or a Sister Act, West Side Story was another one that did really well for us.

Like those shows. Yeah, they'll sell 250 seats every single night in and night out, but then there are, you know, we do have things in our programming that only. That only their, their potential really is met at 80 or a hundred people. So that's fine. If we can, if we find those, then we sort of set our expectations and we can, and we can also make sure that we're doing sort of the same.

Lacey: [00:28:49] So you have the benefit of a lot of data from previous years and you would know the type of show that might naturally cap out at a certain 

Ethan: [00:28:57] yeah, I mean, yeah, there's just, there's just a limited audience for something like a Buyer And Seller  a one man show, you know, I think it'll do. I think, and that's the thing those shows do what they need to do. You don't have the expectation of them selling 250 seats. You have the expectation of them selling 75 seats. So when they sell a hundred you're over the moon, you know, 

Lacey: [00:29:17] okay. You also have a troop that performs outdoors in the summer. 

Ethan: [00:29:21] Yeah. So that's our intern company. They do four TYA shows. And we were able to do, so they actually usually just perform in the theater on Friday mornings. And this, this year we actually sort of rebranded it and we, we called it Picnic With Patchwork and we turned one of our large back parking lots, which is essentially just a field into what felt like a carnival. I mean, there were flags and there was, and people brought picnics and it was really really colorful. We put, we spray painted right on the grass. We would spray paint an eight by eight square for each party that was eight feet apart from the party next to them. And yeah, it was, it was really. Interesting and fun. And so, I mean, so successful that that's now a permanent change, you know, this yeah.

Lacey: [00:30:07] Yeah. I was just thinking that it sounds so good 

Ethan: [00:30:10] where everyone can be vaccinated and everyone could be, you know, everything could be back to normal and we will still be doing the Picnic With Patchwork because it just sort of makes sense. And then we, we also, so we did that on Fridays and then on Tuesdays we would live stream the same show inside.

From the theater. So that was, you know, and those were really popular too. Cause like I said, we were able to, you know, all the interns in the company they have families could watch and people did a promotion with a blog here in New York called Mommy Poppins. That bunch of people bought passes to watch the shows.

Cause everyone at that point was cooped up and looking for stuff other than what they had already watched on Netflix. So it was, there was all sorts of all sorts of different ways we got the product out. 

Lacey: [00:30:52] Do you foresee, even once you can have a full capacity theater, do you foresee continuing with any kind of virtual programming from the sort of, from the perspective of because it, it does increase accessibility in a way that we in the industry have talked about for a long time, but never went there with anything being streaming for a variety of reasons, of course. But now we're there. 

Ethan: [00:31:10] Absolutely. I think that you know, I made the conscious choice in the fall to not do any virtual for our main stage, our three main stage shows to offer no virtual option.

And that really was on purpose to tell my audiences up there that even though we haven't done this. The virtual season that made it accessible for them to watch in their homes, that our business was the business of life theater. That that's what we do. That's what our mission is. And we're going to do that.

And we're going to go back to that. However, I do think that we can expand the reach. We can expand the awareness. And we can, we only help to sustain the organization by coming up with a hybrid of that. Right? So that's actually a great question as well, because let's say we are at a place where Equity and or the state of New Hampshire says we can only do 50% capacity by the summer.

Then I might still do something like Amadeus and Kinky Boots and offer a virtual option to make up for it. Because if that's the case, there will be enough of an  audience to come to, to fill the, that half of the auditorium. But then there will definitely be the people who either don't feel comfortable yet going out, or again, don't have the traditional access of walking out to our theater in, in, in New Hampshire.

And also, I will say there are certain titles that are, that are easier to get the virtual option for us. So I plan to offer probably three or four of our shows virtually no matter where we're at. I already have the rights to do that and I already think, and I think there's no reason not to. 

Lacey: [00:32:40] I want to talk about the other major event of 2020, which is the protests against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd and how those events increased a lot of people's awareness and how in the theater industry theres,  there's been a lot of increased discussion about the need for anti-racist practices. So I'd love to talk with you about Weathervane's reaction to that. And in general, the systemic problems that we have of representation, accessibility and inclusivity, you know, what, how you reacted. Did you find that the Pause allowed you to have a different kind of reaction, a deeper kind of reaction, then you might've been able to otherwise .

What do you think the future holds? 

I really like to preface this question by pointing out that we are both white. And so I may say you may say things that don't come out right. Or that we say something awkward or hurtful to somebody. And so I like to say to people listening, if that is the case we have inadvertently hurt you, please let me know. 

Ethan: [00:33:34] So when George, the George Floyd event occurred, I was we were scheduled to arrive at the Weathervane on June 1st. So the week prior, a friend of mine has a cabin in the woods, in the Adirondacks way, way, way up, and had offered that to me and said, well, why don't you take it for a week and just enjoy being by the lake and take it and have a little vacation before you, because obviously being in the season is a tremendous grind and I thought.

Perfect. This is great. I'll get out of the city. I had been cooped up in the apartment since the middle of March. It was a chance to get fresh air and hike and do all of those things. Of all the things that it did have the thing that it didn't have was cell service or Wi-Fi. I remember I was reading of all things, Stephen King's The Stand. I don't know what came over me, but I thought long book, no, no computer. Why not? And so I would read it, we would play games. We would cook, we would go to bed early, wake up early, go hiking. And then all of a sudden, boom, this happened. And I found myself using, they had an old radio in the kitchen that I used and I would leave it on NPR just to feel .Like it felt like something so enormous, that as nice as the disconnection fields, it was not responsible to be disconnected. And so that sort of flavored that experience, which is one thing. 

But then also it became clear that this had to, this was going to this was also going to be a part of the conversation we had to have for the summer programming.

And we were about to do an event on June 3rd, a development event. And at the beginning of it. We did two things. I wrote a statement that we sent out to our, our email list. And then I also put, I also read that statement in, at the beginning of that event, the irony was that I had already sent it out to our patrons and our subscribers.

So I had gotten some replies some replies that were along the lines of, Oh, I don't want my theater to be political. I'm unsubscribing. Oh, save it for, for radical socialists, liberal blah, blah, blah, all this stuff that you hear when this comes up. And so I felt that I need in that moment to not only read the statement, but also to speak to the idea that I believe that theater is political.

You know, I said, when you, you come see to those that we have produced Ragtime. And when you come see Hairspray, how can you say as much as those might be simple entertainment for you? They actually are, they actually are the amplifying voices for the people who create those stories for you. And I'm no longer interested in running an organization where a patron doesn't understand that these people are, that these, these stories are told through the lens of the people, they have to be told through the lens of the people who actually experienced some version of them, or they're not authentic. And if they're not authentic, then they shouldn't be done. And if we're not telling those stories in a respectful way, then we don't have any right to be charging money for it. We don't have any right for that to be our means of income, our means of employment. I can't be a white cisgendered male producer of theater and think that my experience is the appropriate one to, with, through which to filter some of these stories. I have to rely on my staff, which is heavily female. You know, we've got hopefully representation in a lot of ways.

My development director is Colombian American. My company manager, Peruvian, my associate artistic director is African-American and Afro Caribbean. We have, our tech staff is almost all female, which is something everyone would always remarks that they walk in. They walk in and they're like, Oh my God, I love this like group of bad-ass women, like building stuff in the shop.

And you know, so for me, it became personally, it became the, that I had to like, make sure and dig deep to, to remove anything that could be performative and actually admit to myself if there was anything that was performative, if there was any collaboration or relationship or opportunity that I was given to make myself feel better. My best friend, I posted something on Facebook about how sorry I was when George Floyd was murdered. Her response was. She's a Black woman. "You can't be sorry anymore. It's not, that's not enough. I don't accept that. I'm tired and I'm not going to do this anymore. So you actually have to do things"  Like I said, she's an artist and she's someone I've collaborated with many times and it was great. We actually, in the middle of the summer, I asked for a whole bunch of questions about like, you know, ways in which I had maybe inadvertently used our relationship to feel better to, to be demonstrative or performative in any way. And it was really, I mean, it was just that one, it was that conversation that was really great. But then at least that conversation is something that hopefully I can then apply to my leadership style, the artists that I choose to work with. 

And one thing that I will say that I was changing before this year and before these conversations became so heavily in the forefront, I always felt at the Weathervane as an actor, that the attempt at diversity was great. It was really, I mean, they definitely did it. It was more so than other theaters that I worked at, you know there were always lots of BIPOC performers, but that was where it ended. It was BIPOC performers being directed by predominantly white creative teams, predominantly white administrative staff, 

which I 

Lacey: [00:39:00] would venture to say is, is where we still are in many cases at all levels of the industry, you know, that's, that's often where we are 

Ethan: [00:39:08] The big conversation for me became, I want BIPOC designers. I want BIPOC directors. I want, like I just said, my admin staff alone is, is almost entirely people of color or just not me, not a white cisgender man. 

Lacey: [00:39:25] Right. 

Ethan: [00:39:25] And what I've discovered is in that, by doing that at the beginning of my tenure, I think that, you know we have created we've created an organization that like, no matter where you look there are, are the best people for the job, doing the best job that they know how to do.

And I'm really proud of that and  it's great because honestly, the conversations, these conversations that have come up in 2020 are actually pushing me even further to do that. I mean so much so that like I'm in the Equity company, as far as like an, I sometimes will look and be like, okay, I mean, I'm the, I'm the one that can, that can make these choices.

So I need to go even further. One of the things that was so important to me in the breakdowns was so a lot of times when we do a show that has an actor that has identify as something specific. So for instance, this year it's Kinky Boots and The Mountaintop, both of which obviously have to be Black actors.

And one of the things that I do, so Equity makes us put packages together where we say actor one, will play this role and this role and others. And we have to give two roles just to show what direction we're heading in. I'm here to say that is never the way the package packages come  together. The packages are built around the people, but equity requires 

Lacey: [00:40:38] Oh that's fascinating.

Ethan: [00:40:39] Yeah.  Equity requires that we do that in order to give people some like jumping off point, I guess. Sure. One of the things I did this year and I've been trying to I'm, I'm like waiting for the really smart actors to sort of read between the lines is that I have purposely attached Martin Luther King and Lola to two different male identifying actor packages.

And in them, I am putting roles that are traditionally white or are, you know, expected to be white. So for example, I think one of the packages is Lola in Kinky Boots and Cornelius in Hello Dolly, which is my way of saying to this actor, Hey, you're not just coming up here to play Lola and Martin Luther King and all of the sort of unfortunately tokenized roles, you are coming up here to be a part of a company.

And any, and that story can be told in any way. And then, same thing,  that's why I purposely put MLK in a different actor package. So that, that actor  that wants to play Lola, doesn't also have to feel the burden of saying, but now I've also got to tap into something that's going to be Martin Luther King in order to be competitive for that.

And I think I put with MLK, I put one of the principal roles in The adams Family to say again, the way we're going to do this is not going to be, we're not even, I even had a director reach out to me. And he is the artistic director of a new company called Birmingham Black Repertory Company. And he reached out and said, I am a director and I would love to throw my hat in the ring, and I run this company and therefore I would like to be considered to direct Kinky Boots or The Mountaintop. And I wrote back and said, unfortunately, both Kinky Boots and The Mountaintop have directors, but are you willing to consider a show that doesn't have a director attached like Disaster! or The Adams Family?

And they wrote back and said, I would love to. In fact, I would probably rather direct one of those, but I never think I have permission to ask that because I assume that if an artistic director is looking for is looking for a director for this kind of show, they're probably looking for, you know, they're not looking at me for something that isn't, you know, and I thought, 

Lacey: [00:42:48] Right. That doesn't have like a Black story. 

Ethan: [00:42:51] Right, right, right. And I just think that like that's. Wow. It's so minimizing. It's so diminishing and it's like cheating us all out of what is so great about theater, which is that there are so many different ways to tell a story. And if there was only one, there would only ever be the original production.

If there wasn't 50 different ways to do Hamlet, if there wasn't 200 different ways to do Grease, we would just be doing, we would just do it once and it would be done. But instead those, no matter what the show is, You know, it can continue to be re-imagined and re-imagined repurposed and reexamined. And so I think we have to be, I think we have to be much better about being open to how, how, and by whom and under what circumstances, those things can be reexamined.

Lacey: [00:43:36] Thank you so much for that answer. One thing that you said that really was so interesting to me about the way you created the packets this year and not matching, you know, the two major Black actor roles into one packet. Not only does that do a BIPOC or a Black actor, the service of allowing them to also flourish in a role that was originally written for a white actor like Cornelius in Hello, Dolly, but also it like relieves them of the burden of being, having to be the actor who can do what's required of Lola and then do also do what's required for Martin Luther King at the same time, like expand that kind of energy to do both of those roles. And if they can't do both, then they can't take this job.

Ethan: [00:44:20] Right. 

Lacey: [00:44:20] Which is also like a form of inequity because those roles are hugely different and, and two actors may have very different skill sets, you know, that that's required. 

Ethan: [00:44:29] Yep. And you could create the same argument about two traditionally white roles and how, like, it wouldn't be fair if I, I can't play Tony in West side story. The way I look in the way I am and the way I. Or I can't play Danny in Grease and I'm like, Grease is on my mind today, but I can't play, I can't play Danny in Greece, but I can play Horton the elephant in Seussical. Right. So I would never put those. I would never say if you can't play Danny, then you can't be considered for Horton because those would never be considered as part of the same package of roles.

So why would Lola and Martin Luther King they're so wildly different in every way? There's there's no correlation between them besides the color of their skin. 

Lacey: [00:45:10] Yes. Thank you for that. And I hope that our listeners will give us some feedback if they have it. What are you? Well, you know, as we wrap up, because that was just, so much wonderful information. I like to ask what is giving you joy right now at this time, when joy can be a little hard to come by, except of course let's not get political, but the inauguration gave me joy. 

Ethan: [00:45:32] Yeah, that certainly gave me joy. I think for me, one of the things that I've said through the whole pandemic sort of my side businesses, I coach actors both on material, but also a lot of times on like career moves and career decisions and branding and all of those fun buzzwords. And I have said so many times during this pandemic, how I always, I love coaching. I love, I mean, I think we can all tell that I love talking and I can talk, and, and in circles that you give me a simple question and I'll talk on and on and I started the coaching business, obviously I would have never guessed we'd be in a pandemic, but then in the middle of a pandemic, I also would have never realized that the community that's built around my clients has given me so much joy because there has been such a desire to try and maintain some level of normalcy.

So really right now it's like my clients are sort of giving me that joy because every day for a few hours, I get to not think about Weathervane and not think about OOTB. And I actually get to listen to their, what they're excited about or what they're working on or what they feel anxious about. And that's a great gift.

Lacey: [00:46:36] Thank you. That is a great gift. I feel similarly when I am able to be on a zoom in any capacity with other artists for a few, for a few minutes, kind of the world, the world goes away. That what is that from? That is a lyric." Everything else goes away"  Next To Normal 

Ethan: [00:46:51] Next to Normal. 

Lacey: [00:46:53] Where can people find you out on the social media, on the internet?

And, and I just want to say, we did not talk about your other theater company. It is New York based, so I think that's okay. But would you I'd love for you to mention it and let people know what it is? 

Ethan: [00:47:06] Sure. So the, the theater company here is Out Of The Box Theatrics. We are a nonprofit off-Broadway theater company.

We produce site-specific work, which is designed to mirror and compliment the stories that we're telling so that we sort of challenge our audience's expectations. And the other way, we challenge our audience's expectations is in our casting, which is non-traditional like so many companies, but really like on a wider scale than that.

So, so it's like, there's no regard for gender. There's no regard for age, there's no regard for type or physical disability or color or any of those things that traditionally go into a breakdown. And the idea again, is to sort of examine stories through, through a new lens and that's always been our mission.

So of course this year we've had even more opportunity to explore that. So you can find out info about them at OOTBtheatrics.com, weathervanenh.org, ethanpaulini.com. I'm EMP413 on socials. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's all my info. 

Lacey: [00:48:09] Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is just a great conversation