Braden Abraham.
SEATTLE: In a transfer that took the native arts neighborhood without warning, Seattle Rep introduced final week that creative director Braden Abraham will depart his put up in early 2023 to move up the Writers Theatre of Chicago.
One cause the information was jolting: Abraham has spent his whole skilled profession at Seattle Rep. A gracious, well-liked, and devoted collaborator with native and nationwide artists and corporations, Abraham had lately signed a four-year extension of his Seattle Rep contact when the chance to run Writers Theatre arose earlier this yr. Despite the sudden timing, Abraham advised me this week that he’s parting amicably from the Rep, and is solely pursuing a contemporary creative journey in one other essential, and really completely different, theatre neighborhood—one he’s lengthy admired, he mentioned.
In a written assertion, Seattle Rep’s board of trustees chair Nancy Ward mentioned that the board “celebrates with gratitude Braden’s 20-year tenure with Seattle Rep and the diverse artistic excellence he has curated on our stages over the past eight years. We are excited for the next chapter of our artistic journey and have every confidence in a thriving future as we pursue our vision of theatre at the heart of public life.”
In our interview, Abraham mentioned, “There is never going to be a perfect time for me to leave this theatre that I’ve grown up in. This is an opportunity for me to do something new, after being here at the Rep for so long. The mission of Writers that puts artists at the center—that’s a mission that certainly speaks to me.”
A Washington state native, Abraham got here to the Rep first as a 25-year-old intern, after working in Seattle’s then-vital fringe scene when he was contemporary out of Western Washington University’s theatre program. When the internship ended, he was employed as a Rep creative affiliate. “I ran the new-play program under Jerry Manning and directed a couple shows a year—it was a dream job for a young artist,” Abraham recalled.
When the extremely revered Manning died instantly in 2014 from an an infection following routine coronary heart surgical procedure, the then-37-year-old Abraham was abruptly thrust into the position of the Rep’s interim chief. A yr later, the board of trustees, happy with the soundness and concepts he dropped at the corporate, promoted him to creative director.
Abraham credit Manning, former Seattle Rep supervisor Benjamin Moore, and David Esbjornson (who preceded Manning as creative director) with “grooming me for this job in many ways. When Jerry died it was terrible, hard personally and a big transition for the theatre—a real shock. But I was set up because of how included I had been in the leadership.”
A powerful document of manufacturing new and up to date performs has been a trademark of Abraham’s tenure on the Rep. In conjunction with such corporations as La Jolla Playhouse, Goodman Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has nurtured and introduced early productions of Robert Schenkkan’s dramas in regards to the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (the Tony-winning All the Way and its sequel, The Great Society), the Broadway musical hit Come From Away, and Fannie, Seattle playwright Cheryl L. West’s musical play about Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, amongst different new works.
In 2021, Abraham initiated 20×30, an bold program of commissioning 20 new performs by 2030, “inspired by life in our moment.” The Rep kicked off the challenge with commissions to Zora Howard, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Sylvia Khoury, Nathan Alan Davis, Amy Freed, Benjamin Benne, and Larissa FastHorse. (The way forward for the challenge, Abraham says, lies with the subsequent creative head.)
Abraham has additionally tackled fashionable classics in his personal stagings of such performs as Betrayal, The Glass Menagerie, and a deeply stirring tackle Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that includes bravura performances by TV and stage star Pamela Reed and famous Seattle actor R. Hamilton Wright. As Abraham put it, “I love to see how the past talks to the present.”
Under his steering, the Rep has additionally taken significantly a community-wide dedication to furthering cultural variety onstage and behind the scenes. In 2016 he opened the theatre to wider neighborhood participation by instituting the Public Works challenge of summer season musicals, which concerned social organizations and beginner arts teams from across the Seattle area.
“I was really eager to expand the reach of the theatre, and how we were making work, and who we were making it for,” Abraham defined. “We were one of the first regional companies to borrow the model from the Public Theater’s Public Works series in New York. I just wanted to tie the theatre more to the community, and really reflect the breadth and depth of the talent here.”
After operating a flagship, Tony-winning resident playhouse with a present $15 million price range and two proscenium homes to fill—the 678-seat Bagley Wright Theatre and the 282-seat Leo Ok. Theatre—Abraham insisted he really relishes the prospect to provide within the Writers Theater’s smaller, thrust-configured mainstage and its versatile black field area. “I love the idea of being able to do work in the recently designed building,” he mentioned. “It has an intimacy that really welcomes people and makes theatre social and fun.” (Writers Theatre’s price range as of 2020 was round $8 million; it must also be famous that Abraham will succeed Writers interim creative director Bobby Kennedy, who stepped in after founding AD Michael Halberstam’s 2021 resignation on account of allegations of inappropriate backstage conduct.)
With Seattle Rep’s present managing director, Jeffrey Herrmann, Abraham has confronted monetary shortfalls and different worrisome fiscal points throughout his tenure. Though the Rep maintained a gradual presence with on-line productions and occasions throughout the pandemic, and was buoyed by authorities arts funding when its levels had been darkish, the problem of discovering ongoing help in a metropolis that has modified enormously has been more and more troublesome in line with Abraham. While the inhabitants of Seattle has grown by over 20 % up to now decade, largely as a result of explosion of the tech sector, the price of dwelling and sustaining theatres has additionally swelled. Artists have struggled to stay within the space, and a few smaller corporations have closed on account of lack of inexpensive area and different assets.
Abraham expressed dismay that the City of Seattle lately slashed its arts price range (citing a lower in pandemic aid funding). He additionally identified that with all of the wealth generated within the Puget Sound area’s tech sector, some main native companies and moguls give little or, like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, nothing to arts and tradition organizations.
This disconnect stems from the humanities being too typically considered now as “market-based” commodities, Abraham says, a “luxury” slightly than a vital amenity value encouraging and made broadly accessible. Support is important, he asserted, as a result of it might take years for among the metropolis’s many newcomers to find and start to patronize native cultural establishments. He confessed, “Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that we’ve survived this long.”
The Rep has not solely survived; it has remained sturdy and related. As Abraham strikes on, and his theatre makes plans for a search to exchange him, he can take no small quantity of pleasure in that. His remaining manufacturing is the premiere of the Rep-commissioned play Mr. Dickens and His Carol. Adapted from Samantha Silva from her novel and developed and directed by Abraham, it runs at Seattle Rep Nov. 25-Dec. 23.
Seattle-based critic Misha Berson (she/her) is a frequent contributor to this journal.
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