In Part 2 of our final Theatre in Community interview, which is with Pat Murphy Sheehy, we discuss her tenure as the Artistic Director of DC’s Source Theatre and as Chair of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and other leadership positions. We then shift the conversation to Pat’s perspective on the ongoing struggles of DC’s theatre community, particularly those of small theatres, as they face a changing cultural climate.
A quick note to listeners: At the bottom of each interview, we include a glossary of theatre terms and names referenced in the interview.
Michael: When you took over Source how many spaces did it have? During the mid-‘80s it had three, the main stage, the warehouse, and it had The ReSource.
Pat: The ReSource. And that, yes.
Michael: It was all, so that allowed for a lot of, sort of, productions in-house. You didn’t have to go out and find the space. So when you took over, how many spaces did it have? Just the two?
Pat: I think we just had the two. Although I will say I did T.J. Edwards’ Busboy. I directed that in one of, in The ReSource.
Elizabeth: In The ReSource.
Pat: And that was was ‘84. Busboy was ‘84.
Michael: So what was it like working in that, because each of those spaces is quite different from each other. And so what was it like just juggling those three spaces, or the two spaces when you took over? And how did that affect the performances, or the production concepts, or selections made?
Pat: I have to tell you, the first thing that I was concerned about was programming the spaces with good work. And luckily I had worked at the theater for such a long while and knew all the actors. And so I went to ones and some of them and said, “Bill Freimuth, what would you like to do?” And he said, “I’d like to do Titus Andronicus as a farce.” And it was one of the most successful things I think the theater’s ever done. I wish somebody had filmed that because it was funny and it was obnoxious. Michaeline O’Neal, cereal coming out of her mouth. Bloody.
Elizabeth: Right. Titus Andronicus is one of the bloodiest—
Pat: I know! I know! That’s what I’m saying!
Elizabeth: Everybody dies. It’s just incredibly barbaric.
Pat: Exactly! And then, as a little special piece, we had a paperboy going through and hocking the Washington Post. Anyway, that was a wonderful—and that’s the way I programmed it. And luckily, I knew the people in the acting company, and I was a colleague.
Michael: So when you were programming, do you think that the various spaces, where you had two spaces, did each space take on its own identity? So, if people went to the main stage, were they expecting a certain kind of play versus the warehouse?
Pat: No, it was not programmed in the sort of theme of the play or comedy or drama or anything like that. It really was dictated by the size of the play and the size of the audience in the sense of, if you’re doing a bigger play, you want to be in the warehouse. And we opened the season with The Dining Room, which was part of the negotiation with paying the royalties that we had to clear our debts. That was one of the first administrative things I had to do.
Elizabeth: “Welcome to leadership.”
Pat: Yes.
Elizabeth: “Will you please take care of this?” Oh my gosh.
Pat: . Anyway, and that was very successful, and it fits so nicely—
Elizabeth: Yeah, the whole scrapbook. You’ve got this amazing collection. You’ve done an amazing job, Pat, of chronicling the massive numbers of shows and initiatives and, oh, just so many different dimensions.
Pat: I’d like to talk about that for a moment. Because of my age, I’m 85, I’ve been very aware that I am the last living member of people who worked at Source. And I’ve recently gone to some people’s funerals and who are younger than I am. And I’m very concerned about this history. As Michael was referring to it, it’s the history of the beginning of theater as we know it here in Washington. I feel like this small theater movement here in DC is the heart and bones of the cultural show here in Washington. I think so much has been built off of it. Galleries, and good restaurants, and things like that, that they know the level of that personal interaction that happens in theater, and it draws people. It draws people to our city. And I just am so aware of the history and what is recorded, and you all have to be congratulated for what you’re doing now. This is just, like, a gift to DC. Thank you both so much for it.
Elizabeth: Thank you for your time. Yes.
Pat: But I I’m concerned, and I’d like to see an effort to coordinate what we’re all trying to do as far as documenting the history of theater.
Michael: In terms of that, the legacy of theater—’cause Source is the pivotal sort of beginnings, as you said, of the small theater, professional small theater movement. If you go to 14th Street now, you would think that it was always just expensive restaurants and everything, but during those early years when it was bustling with theatrical activity because of Source and other—
Elizabeth: Studio and Woolly, yes.
Michael: Woolly was there for a bit, Studio, etc. What do you think are the main features that you would want our listeners to know about those early grassroots origins of small professional theater in DC?
Pat: First of all I want to tell them, because they see theaters now and they don’t have any idea of how they really got there, Washington is not conducive to small theater. In the sense that we are not an industrial town. We don’t have big, huge warehouses that theaters usually go into. We also don’t have a large business community to support those theaters. Everything is national here. And you go to some place like Cincinnati, and there are businesses that are from Cincinnati, included in Cincinnati, they know that anything that’s cultural and contributes to the economy of their city is something to support. And we have the National Endowment for the Arts and things like that, but there are a lot of people trying to get that money.
And as a local theater community, we need the local support. And we have to figure out what that is. And I, frankly, think that the government, the DC government and the national government, is going to have to step in and give more financial support to things like the buildings. I’m thinking, of course, about Source Theatre, because we are now not performing or in existence as a performing theatre, but our building was saved as a theatre. And I can tell you that worked very well for a while. It should be the incubator for some of these up-and-coming small theater groups. And it was. But now the people who are responsible are looking at it as being a multi-purpose space. And that can’t be. There is nothing equal to a multi-purpose space and a theater. You have to be a theater to perform plays, to be supporting that kind of activity.
And I think that’s going to be a big move that should happen because, we have some wonderful theaters, but they’re Equity, they’re big, they have big budgets, and there’s no place for that beginning theater like Source was.
Elizabeth: This is, we’ve had lots of conversations with theatermakers, but an issue that seems particularly pronounced in DC is this issue of real estate. And the professionalization and the cost of doing theater at the institutional levels. As you mentioned, the warehouse spaces of industrial cities, DC has some magnificent theaters, they’re palaces of theater-making, but they are massively expensive structures. And in other cities where you have an aesthetic that is embraced by the theater-going public that is, it really embraces a small, intimate, rough theater approach. It’s a very different aesthetic that I think exists in some places that don’t exist in DC.
So, we should, I’d like to move on to the transition back at the pivot point when you took over the artistic leadership of Source and really talk some more about your sort of philosophy and what your style was and how it was different. Just that whole transition period. There were rocky things happening, but you came in and led the theater for 11 years. And if you could talk a little bit about that transition process.
Pat: I have to be honest and tell you that part of it was very painful. And I’m not sure I want to get into that deeply. But I would be happy to tell you about our first season and talk about that. I really was there to support what I considered Bart’s mission. I was a fan. I believed in what he wanted to do. But as I said, I was sometimes frustrated by all this without having the attention that it deserved from the design point of view, production, publicity, etc. That is what I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to keep the mission but add good production values, publicity, awareness of what the plays were and who was in them, build a community that knew the actors, would follow their careers, which, as it turned out, was, is something that has happened.
Elizabeth: Sure.
Pat: And so my first season here—
Michael: You said you did 24 shows in your first season, right?
Pat: Yeah! And they were all—
Michael: So you maintained the abundance of—
Pat: I maintained the abundance. Now I will say that they were very much brought by other people to me. They had that same variety that Bart did in one-man shows, or I think maybe Charles Busch did another show in my season. He certainly was a playwright that I turned to often. We did a lot of shows, but I can tell you that I reduced it back little by little. I started to put more emphasis on the festival and make that something that was all over the city. Because we got a lot of attention through the festival and a lot of people got wonderful experiences. I mean I can go down the line, Eric Schaeffer, who founded Signature Theatre, his first work outside of, in directing outside of a community theater out in Arlington was in the Washington Theatre Festival. People had legitimate, good experiences and exposure through the festival. And since so many of them were participating, they also found each other. There was this vibe going on with the festival and I started to get more and more attracted to it. Having worked in the festival myself in the beginning. And so, I felt like we needed to put our attention on the quality of work in the season and giving the festival support and credence and honoring the work that went on in the festival.
Michael: So, if you could describe the festival for—most of our viewers, they’ll know the Fringe Festival. It’s changed a lot over the years as well. But they won’t know Source’s Festival. So, could you describe how long it was, what kind of plays were done there?
Elizabeth: The late Keith Parker.
Michael: Yeah, Keith Parker.
Pat: Oh gosh, don’t get me—
Michael: Yeah, so if you could just describe it for our listeners.
Pat: I am going to describe it very honestly, and it is, first of all, no one is paid. Everyone is welcome to present their idea. So it’s open particularly for new work. And we worked a lot with Ernie as far as his playwriting group. And made sure that—and Keith was very good friends with him, so that always—and we’d get submissions from all over the world. And Keith and his readers would call out the ones that were promising, and we particularly emphasized local playwrights. So that was one process that was going on all year, which was selecting the plays that would be produced in the festival.
Now, when I say produced, okay, we’ve selected your play, now you go find rehearsal space, and we will give you a couple of days of performance time that will be publicized, it may be in a school, a restaurant, on our stage. Especially after I’d gone, we’d taken Sister Mary to Edinburgh, my mind got so expanded doing that, that I thought, like Bart, “Oh, here’s a bar. Let’s do a play!” Or “Here’s a toilet!” It was, it just expanded my mind because the Edinburgh Festival is just, every place, everywhere. A telephone booth.
Michael: It was primarily during the summer, right?
Pat: It was in the summer. And purposely. Because that’s what started it, was this was a period of time nobody was in the city. Nobody was going to plays, etc. And it also was hot nobody wanted to go to plays! But what we found, I have to tell you, one of the first things I found out about the festival time was that August tends to be a very pleasant month in Washington.
Pat: It’s earlier, it’s July that gets really bad, so it’s deceiving.
Elizabeth: That’s true. A lot of people are out of town. Yeah. It’s a little quieter.
Pat: Yeah, and parking’s available.
Elizabeth: Parking’s available.
Michael: So the festival had quite a few plays.
Pat: Yeah, and I’m seeing on, this will be recognizable by both of you, the 10-minute play competition, which was the—
Michael: Sure, yeah.
Pat: —hottest ticket in town.
Elizabeth: Right.
Pat: And I have to tell you that this is the 12th festival, and it’s got twelve main plays. So that would be a full length or two one-acts or something like that. That would be probably in the theater slot.
Michael: Sure. And the festival, as I remember the festival, the, it’s like Fringe, design values and all that stuff were minimal, right? There wasn’t a lot of focus on that.
Pat: No.
Michael: But how, what about in terms of your main stage shows during the regular season? Did you improve the design quality?
Pat: Oh, yes! Our main shows, our main season shows, I had professional designers. And we were not Equity, but I tried to pay almost Equity prices to the actors. That was my goal, is to get the payments up to what would be a professional level without going Equity because of the festival. Because they would want the festival to be in the Equity contract and there was no way we could do the festival if we had to do that. So that always held us back. And we had Equity contracts, guest artists, and that sort of thing.
Michael: Guest artists, sure. So that was one of the changes you brought was the increase in pay and the professional designers in terms of the production.
Pat: Oh yes. Yes, that was very important to me.
Elizabeth: This is not a fair question, but there are so many hundreds of productions that have happened at Source, are there standout productions during your tenure that you’d like to talk about? You mentioned Julius Caesar, of course, from back in the day.
Pat: Oh, that’s true. Yeah.
Elizabeth: I remember the production of Equus with Kryztov Lindquist comes to mind and then I think there was revival of that not too long ago. But is there a production or two that you’d like to just comment on?
Pat: Talking about Equity, we did a production of Jeffrey. And we had, to get the rights, we had to do it as an Equity production. And I remember, I had some connection to it from, I have a son in law that’s part of a production company. And I remember being frightened because I thought, oh my gosh, there’s so many things that you have to have when you go Equity. Your dressing rooms have to have a certain amount of space between each actor. And my mind immediately went back to the days when the dressing room was on the old freight elevator. And I thought can we make this transition? But we did, and we worked very hard to make it up to Equity standards. And a very nice thing happened. But because we were, we had a couple of people come from New York who had been in the production in New York but one of the leads was a young man who came in literally off the street, Jeffrey Mandin, and he said, “I understand you’re doing Jeffrey and are you having auditions?” And I said, “I think we are. I haven’t spoken to the director about when they’re going to be, or whatever, but—” and he said, “I’d like to try out.” He was cast in one of the lead roles, and he is in California now, and I occasionally get a thing on Facebook about, “Oh, Pat, I remember you taking me in as I walked in off the street.” And I, it’s those kind of things that make me know Source was important and Source could continue to be important if it was available for the new generations of young emerging artists.
Michael: There was the whole “Save our Source” efforts.
Pat: Yes. Which I spearheaded.
Michael: So can you tell us about that period and the outcome and the current situation, the struggles related to that?
Pat: Do you want the version that names or—?
Michael: Why don’t you go ahead and name names.
Pat: I’ll just say the theater got to be very much in debt. I had gone, my daughter had her accident and I had left the theater. Retired. And Joe Banno he was the Artistic Director and I’ve known Joe Banno since he was at Georgetown University, and I was at Holy Trinity Players across the street. And it’s been a long time, and I have always loved his work, and gave him opportunities at Source, etc. And when all this was happening to me, I thought, Joe’s got such a good artistic sense that I think I’ll suggest him for the leader. And unfortunately, he does have a wonderful artistic sense, but he doesn’t have good management sense, and the theater just went through a horrible period as you probably know.
Pat: So when it got to be time to decide what was going to happen, we kept having meetings with the Council, et cetera, because this was a building that the city had been very involved in. They loaned us the money to buy it. And when I was in charge, we paid our mortgage every month, but that was part of the debt too. It was through negotiations, and I must say that Councilmember Graham was very influential in getting us to a point where Cultural DC—Is it Cultural DC?
Elizabeth: I think it’s called Cultural D. C., yeah.
Pat: Yeah, I know they’ve changed their name. I was on the board at one time. They negotiated a plan. And I thought it was a good plan, and I thought it was something that was fair to everybody. And unfortunately, the people who were head of the organization that purchased it are not there anymore, and there’s been new leadership. So, that’s all I’ll say about it. It’s questionable constantly what it’s gonna be, and it shouldn’t be a question. It should be a theater, period, ‘cause that’s what was negotiated.
Elizabeth: Stepping back a bit and continuing to talk about theater, I want to rewind the videotape a little bit and go back to the time when Source first went off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. It sure seems to me like Source was the first DC theater to go to the Edinburgh Festival. I’m not completely sure that’s true.
Pat: I’m not sure, but it was, on that trip, Sister Mary Ignatius was a production between Source and Scena Theatre, Robert McNamara. And Amy Schmidt made the costumes that were just so wonderful, camel heads, and it had a terrific cast, it was a big favorite here in DC. So we applied to take it to the festival. And we raised the money to get the actors over there. And, you have to find housing for them, which is, could be above a bar, or in a friend’s home, or whatever. And the one interesting thing that I love, and I wish we had incorporated it more, but I’m afraid Washington just wasn’t ready for it, was that the actors would get in costume and wander the streets of Edinburgh and promote the show. And I thought that was so much fun. I just thought they were just wonderful. Ham it up in public. Grab. And in the camel costume. Anyway, so we had a wonderful time, and we were quite well received.
Michael: And then looking at taking a bird’s eye view, or some of the changes that have occurred in DC theater, in our conversation with the Joy Zinnemann, she talked about the whole building of a downtown theater, and she framed it as the commercialization of theater. Because she remembered the days when she would audition local actors that became more and more difficult to do. And you’ve mentioned how open Source was. So, definitely DC theater changed dramatically as it became Equity and became more focused on out-of-town actors there are obviously positives, but then there are negatives, too—
Pat: Michael, I have to tell you that this is just an area that I have very strong feelings about and part of it is because of space and buildings. It’s one thing to be able to take over a little townhouse and with the storefront and call it The ReSource and put 35 seats in it. But those days are gone. We need government help to keep spaces like that. And my feeling, I’m sorry, but I was never interested in putting my efforts into bigger and bigger theaters. I just wasn’t. I didn’t want to run a bigger theater. And I see how successful Joy was and congratulate her for that. And certainly, I’m very good friends with Howard and the current artistic director Maria and I’m just thrilled that they have that beautiful theater.
Elizabeth: This is Woolly Mammoth you’re talking about.
Pat: Right. And Howard was very smart in the way he went about getting this theater. He, it wasn’t a matter of, we won’t do this so we can have a bigger theater. This theater has all the elements of a small theater because of the way it’s built and designed. So it still retains a lot of the flavor that I’m still comfortable with. So, I just, I made a big mistake because Source is not the theater anymore. Source is closed. But under my circumstances, my mission, my love of theater, and what I wanted to achieve, I think that was the path that I had to take and wanted to take.
Michael: And even in our conversation with Joy, she talked about how important the small theater was. So even when she was designing the new Studio theater, she put in four small theaters because she said small theater is the future of theater. And I actually have thought about Studio theater is just Bart’s idea of abundance—
Pat: Exactly!
Michael: When you put it all in one building! So at that level, the commercialization of theater was happening, but she wanted to keep it as small and tried to find a way to keep the small theater still, the experience.
Elizabeth: Yeah, the intimacy. Joy talked about no audience members more than eight rows from the action. So, at an artistic level, you can still have realism because you’re, you the actor is still performing in an intimate environment. And clearly every space that Source ever used was an intimate environment. So there was not just the affordability and the abundance, but there was also a kind of intimate connection between the audience and the performers so that it wasn’t mega theater. It was not happening—
Pat: Yeah, I mean it just never happened up the street. Necause there wasn’t the big car showroom available. And so Bart was doing this very innovatively and as a pioneer in this theory. With the warehouse, the main stage, and even the little reSource. And he could have done other spaces around there, too. But it is very good that she had the opportunity to design one building that would have that same feel for, because I do think, I agree with her completely. You have to have some sort of smaller space that’s available for a smaller sort of experimental situation.
Elizabeth: Speaking of The ReSource, you and I talked some, not too long ago.
Pat: Oh yeah, I know where you’re going.
Elizabeth: The very first show I did at Source was at The ReSource, so I have fond memories of running lines with the—
Pat: Which one was that?
Elizabeth: It was called Big L’s Best Friend. Anyway, but I wanna—and you talked about coming out of the back in the day, you and your husband came out of the rehearsal of Julius Caesar and your tires were sliced. And then you also talked in our previous conversation about having to break up a knife fight. I think this was when you were coming out of The ReSource, and I think it was you and TJ—No, I’m mixing up the knife fight and the shootout.
Pat: The shootout. I wondered if you’d get around to that.
Elizabeth: Tell us about the shootout. This was something that was a great story on 14th
Pat: It turned out to be a great story, but it was a very scary situation. We were in The ReSource, which, it was a storefront building. So it had these two bay windows that sort of went out into the street and then came in for the door. And so, we were leaving the rehearsal and it’s, it was an all-male cast. The playwright T. J. Edwards, and Bill Hollingsworth, who I had worked with quite a bit, directing and acting. And Ernie Meyer. But T. J. had written it, and it was really a wonderful play about, the busboys, and behind the scenes in the kitchen, what went on. And so, we finished the rehearsal and we’re in this little space, open the door and go out. And we had a situation where we didn’t have a key, we just were inside and knew the door would lock when we got outside. We got outside in this little sort of v-shaped between the windows and saw a man up 14th Street in the middle of the street shooting a gun. And he was just randomly firing this pistol. I quickly tried to grab the doorknob and to no avail. And he was walking toward us. Now, he wasn’t shooting constantly, but he had the gun in his hand. And I even noticed later that my car, that was parked directly in front, had bullet holes in it. So he had hit my car a couple of times in this walk down the street. I thought, headlines, “MOTHER OF FOUR DIES IN STOREFRONT—.” I always go to the headlines, right?
Michael: Yes, of course.
Pat: And Bill Hollingsworth, that I knew quite well, threw me on the ground and got on top of me. Now, he knows I’m a mother of four. And he wanted to protect me. And you have to understand, this is before cell phones.
Elizabeth: Oh, of course. Yeah.
Pat: This is before anything like that. And so we are just very quietly shuddered down and scrunched down in this doorway. And Bill jumps up suddenly and runs into the street going the other direction.
And what happened was he saw a cab. And cabs, of course, have radios. And so he saw that as the only way to get help and communicate. So, he did. He accosted the taxi and sent in the request for police. And in the meantime, the guy is coming closer and closer. And, by God, I don’t know whether it was Bill running to the cab or what, he gets to almost within reaching distance of him, and turns around and walks back up the street.
Elizabeth: This is the shooter.
Pat: Yeah, and I thought, oh, my God. I prayed to every saint that I grew up with and thanked them profusely. But it was that kind of situation that unfortunately was not an everyday occurrence but could happen.
Michael: It just themes right into a question I have to ask. Theater is made up of two elements primarily, right? You have your actors performing and you have your audience receiving the performance. What are your memories of the kind, what kind of audience? Who would go into an environment—what were your impressions of those audiences during that period where yeah there was a shootout, there were knifings, there were all this stuff going on. And you’ve spoken about a mother of four out here. The audience that goes to see those—could you maybe just reflect a little bit on sort of your memories of those early audiences that really braved the conditions, I guess?
Pat: I have to say that Source and the warehouse, both of those buildings, were in a very active block. In the sense of Maddows Tire Business was I think next door to us in the main stage and down the street was Black Cat—
Elizabeth: Music venue.
Pat: —which was a big building and was a legitimate place for young people to go and dance and drink and whatever. So it was an active two sides of the block. ReSource was up the street, and a lot of the buildings were abandoned. And you’re right, that was not a smart place to go. And honestly, I’ll tell you sometimes our audience were some of the prostitutes that were in that area.
Michael: Taking a break from their work to go see a play.
Pat: Yeah! And I guess they knew that we would let them in, and they didn’t have to pay. It was people who, young people, who took a risk.
Michael: So the audience though was really young?
Pat: The audience was very reflective. And that was, that’s very interesting that you talk about that, Michael, because it’s true. Nobody in their fur coat is going to be coming to The ReSource.
Michael: Yeah, because one of the big concerns of theater in DC today is the audience is getting so old. But here you have this theater in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and they’re attracting young audiences and the kinds of shows they’re doing are attracting them. And the prices are right as well.
Pat: Yes. And their friends are probably in it. And it was only 38 seats.
Elizabeth: Do you remember how much tickets were when people did pay?
Pat: I don’t. No, I don’t remember. I can look it up.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn’t a hundred bucks, obviously.
Pat: Oh, God, no. Oh, no. Our late night has a wonderful logo. Yeah. And it says “Big yucks, five bucks.”
Elizabeth: “Big yucks, five bucks.” Yeah.
Pat: That’s the range that we’re talking about.
Michael: Sure.
Elizabeth: Speaking of kind of big deals, you, Pat, have been in super key leadership positions in the artistic community in Washington, DC. for many years over your long career. You were chair of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which our listeners probably know is the main funder of arts activities coming from the—
Pat: May I interrupt?
Elizabeth: Sure.
Pat: On one thing. The fortunate thing about that experience was that I was on the Commission, I was chosen on the Commission, Abel López, Doug Bailey, a lot of people that you would know, we all worked for Marion Barry to be mayor. And he expanded the arts budget—something that was unheard of at the time—three million dollars. And so, we were so fortunate to be on this commission with Peggy Cooper Cafritz as the chair.
Elizabeth: Right. The late Peggy Cooper Cafritz.
Pat: Yeah. And I just want to give her credit for how beautifully the Commission functioned and how expansive their funding was. People who normally would not be funded, under Peggy and Mayor Barry and all of us, the commissioners, were very proud to include a lot of these artists. And one of my goals when I became chair was to get the commissioners out and the panelists out into the city to see these arts communities and individual artists. And following Peggy, I was very successful. So I just wanted to—
Elizabeth: Even today, I think, and there have been, there’s a whole historical journey of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, it’s a whole other interview, but I think, as someone who has received tremendous support as an individual artist, as a theater producer, as an educator, teaching artists. I think Washington, DC is number one in the country for supporting individual artists and small emerging artists and arts organizations. It is a remarkable record. There are data points about that and I’m not 100 percent sure I’ve got my data points, but it is something that that is extraordinary for this very small municipality.
Pat: Right. I know, from going to a lot of the national conferences that we had, that we were right up there as leaders in not only the amount of money that was given, but the involvement in the arts and going to performances and being in touch with individual artists, et cetera, but also inclusion. Women, the racial bias, all the groups were equally recognized for grants. It was an astounding record. And I’m very proud of that period of time because I think it made an impact on the overall arts commission movement here in DC.
Elizabeth: Well, and another thing that was significant in DC that I think is significant among other cities as well is we had the League of Washington Theatres, which was an organization of theater producers that was very collaborative and really supported and nurtured a kind of spirit of collaboration and collegiality. There’s a huge impact in an industry that is historically very competitive. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about this spirit of creative camaraderie among theater producers in this city.
Pat: I think it’s something that has grown. I think the competitiveness for some people is probably still there. And I just have to pinpoint, Howard Shalwitz, to me, was a voice of helping each other, being able to give support and voice to other performers or theaters. And I think through people like that, the theater community grew in a very good way. And I think through people like that the theater community grew in a very good way and, I think, in a way that we will get through any crisis that happens in our city because of that closeness and inclusiveness.
Michael: Now you’ve been recognized for your contribution to the DC theater scene. I think both the Helen Hayes Awards as well as I think a DC Mayor Arts Award. Where do you see the current DC theatrical landscape? What is it like now?
Pat: I have to say, I love that I get invited to theater and try as much as I can. My family has a farm on the Eastern Shore and so I spend almost half my time up there. But there are young, very active, wonderful theaters that are happening now. And because they are associated with Source, and had their beginnings at Source, I have to pinpoint Constellation Theatre. Allison Stockman is just such a wonderful artistic leader. And what I love about her particularly is that she casts actors who may not be well known in this theater community, but she sees something in them and brings it out in her plays. I am always impressed with her casting and the performers that work with her. So, I just want to do a shout out to her. And she is currently at the Source!
Elizabeth: Really great production values, too, Constellation has, I’ve always been impressed with their design elements.
Pat: Yes. Beautiful design. I’m very pleased.
Michael: And is there still a smaller theater community—
Pat: Well, she’s, you know, she’s been around for quite a while and won many awards. I do have to also recognize Rorschach. Jenny is just Jenny and Randy are just wonderful artistic directors and the most imaginative people I know. During COVID, they did this sort of scavenger hunt all over Washington so that people would be outside, but they’d be experiencing a theater like hunting ground. But, anyway, she’s just so imaginative and always does very creative work. Rorschach Theater is another one that I love going to their plays.
Michael: Now, you’ve also spearheaded the Murphy, Pat Murphy Sheehy New Playwrights Fund at Woolly Mammoth.
Pat: We don’t really know what to call that.
Michael: That happens just to be the current name.
Pat: Yeah, whatever. But I’ll tell you what happened with that. Yes. It happened because when I had to leave Source the board wanted to give me something that would be a legacy and they created this fund. And it does have, it’s it started out as the PMS Fund. We all, I looked at that on paper and we thought—
Elizabeth: Feminist theater.
Pat: “Maybe not.” Anyway, so I had this PMS Fund and at first it was to support an emerging artist. But when Source stopped producing, I took it over to Howard and asked him if he would incorporate it into his theater. And so, now, he didn’t want it to be something that was just, we’ll use the money to have a reading of a play. He wanted to get to know other artists around the country. And so he made it into a sort of like an invitation, a travel. We’ll use the fund to bring artists in, to get acquainted with the artists here in DC, especially at Woolly, and look at their work and discuss their work and that sort of thing.
And it has turned into this wonderful, certainly, opportunity for me. I get to go to dinner with each of them. And they sometimes are playwrights, sometimes they’re an actor, particularly if they have done a significant one-man show. And it’s just been a lovely arrangement. And I feel very worthwhile, but I have to credit Howard. And Maria has kept up with it so beautifully. I’m very happy with that, my PMS fund.
Elizabeth: I want to zoom the camera lens out to the sort of bigger picture and talk with you a bit about the landscape and the crises that are going on both pre- and post-pandemic. There’s clearly a crisis in American regional theater financially and in terms of audience decline. I’m sure you’ve been following articles and there’s theaters closing and cutting back their seasons, et cetera, et cetera. And I think something parallel is happening in other kinds of art forms, be it symphonies or museums, et cetera. So, I’m wondering if, as a veteran leader in the theatrical landscape, if you have any sage advice for current theaters? We talked a little bit before about theater as an intimate experience versus this kind of macro theater palace. But are there other thoughts that you would give to either current producers or aspiring producers as to how to sidestep this crisis in money and audience?
Pat: First of all, do not forget I’m 85.
Elizabeth: You don’t look it, so—
Pat: Television wasn’t even invented when I was growing up. Until my brother sat in front of them. I have to say that because things are so different now, I know you young people can’t imagine.
Elizabeth: Oh yes, we’re so young.
Pat: You, I will tell you, once you reach 80, that is a big difference from even 79. And I feel like I’m in a foreign world sometimes particularly in our political situation now here in the United States. And I think that situation has been, has made a big difference in the, just the spirituality between people. And part of that is a reflection in what’s happening in theater. Because I think of theater like a spiritual experience. And I think of theaters as almost like churches. Because for me they are places that you have an emotional exchange in person with another human being. And I think there’s a feeling now that is not needed anymore. And in truth, it’s needed more than ever. So when someone’s staring down at their phone and walking along the street, what can you do to get that person into a live theater experience? And I’m just, that’s a very simplification of what’s happening. But I have no answers to that.
Michael: Yeah, when I was still teaching at the University of Maryland, and then we went online, I, as a theater artist, immediately understood how ineffective online teaching was. Compared to the emotional exchange you have with students in-person. And so I jumped at the first opportunity to get back in the classroom, which is where real mental engagement occurs.
Pat: Yes!
Michael: It doesn’t happen online. And so I, and because in theater, I agree with you that people no longer, they’re almost terrified, I think, at some level, of that emotional engagement with people that they don’t really know and they don’t know what might happen at all. That’s an interesting take on the crisis in theaters, that exchange. Ari Roth, he called it the death of the dialogic. But, again, the dialogical sort of exchanging between people is fear of that sort of opposing ideas going back and forth, which is the essence of theater again. Where you have different viewpoints, and you have to be willing to emotionally engage with things that maybe are outside your comfort zone.
Pat: Yeah, I as an old lady and a mother, I say, just take their phones away from them.
Elizabeth: Some schools are really trying to do that. It’s torture for the teachers.
Pat: I used to limit my kids’ time in front of the television. Because I truly believe that facing a screen like that, your brain just goes off. And that you don’t have that evaluation going on as you’re watching something. You’re just absorbing it. And I can’t imagine, I credit, I’ll tell you, my children, who are parents, are geniuses. To have to parent in this day and age with the distractions and the temptations and the devices and everything that are constant. I’m just amazed at how—my children, of course, are doing beautifully as parents.
Elizabeth: This is a kind of an aside. I recently reread Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which was written in the ‘50s—
Pat: Oh my gosh!
Elizabeth: —and oh my gosh, putting aside the burning of the books and all of that, there’s a phenomenon in there where people go into their rooms that are filled with these video panels. And they’re inundated with just meaningless chit-chat. And they spend their entire lives just engulfed in this sort of triviality. And there are no books left, so nobody has deeper thought. Clearly there’s no theater, so there’s no deeper engagement. It was so astonishing to re-read this from 75 years ago.
Pat: Exactly!
Elizabeth: Props to Ray Bradbury. And props to you, madame, because we want to ask you one of our very final questions that we ask all of our interviewees, and that is what tangible, practical advice you would give to our listeners about how they can nurture and sustain their own creativity.
Pat: Wow. Just off the top of my head, I have an answer, and this isn’t anything I’ve thought about or whatever, but I had a very, I had a very lovely friend who was a designer, a young man, and he said, “Theater’s a situation where you’re not employed all the time, and you need to be employed! You need other people to do it!” It’s not like you can go to your closet and paint on an easel or something. And he said, “What everyone in theater needs to do when they’re not in a production or working on something creative, they need to do something outside of theater. They need to go to a class in painting. They need to go to a ballet or take ballet. They need to do something in the arts that keeps that creativity alive. And it doesn’t have to be theater.”
And really think that’s the best and almost the only advice. Because it’s exercising that creative part of you. And if that’s not exercised, then forget it. You’ve gotta keep doing it in and, of course I’m not doing theater now, per se, but I try to certainly go to a lot of theater. And often it’s people that I’ve worked with, or children of people I’ve worked with. And I really thought that was the best advice that I could be given.
Now, as I referred to when I was speaking to Michael about, I think of theater as a religion, I think that anything that I’m doing in that field, in my religion. Like if I’m reading a play, just being involved with theater in any way that you want. And I see theater as relating to real life. Civilian life, we call it, right? And so, if it’s something that you’re doing in your home that’s creative, you can use some of the principles of theater. I was actually thinking about that today when I was getting ready and I wanted to move, I wanted this table here so that I could display the album and I wanted other things over here. But that’s like designing a set. And then I have to think about, now, who’s gonna move over in this area? And do we need a prop over in that area? And so, if you keep that mentality going, you’re continuing to stimulate that theater experience.
Elizabeth: This has been a fabulous exercise in creativity across the board talking with you, Pat Murphy Sheehy. This has been fabulous. Thank you. Thank you.
Pat: Thank you. And as I told you, Elizabeth, every time I talk to you, we should record it because I’m so fascinated by you guys and what you’re doing. Thank you.
Elizabeth: This has been fabulous. Thank you, madame, Pat Murphy Sheehy. This has been the Theatre and Community Podcast Series of Creativists in Dialogue. Thanks for listening.
Tremendous thanks to all our listeners. To those of you who are free subscribers, please consider becoming paid subscribers so that Creativists in Dialogue can continue bringing you insightful conversations about creativity from Washington, DC, and beyond. Thanks.
Special shout out to Creativists in Dialogue’s production team: Audio engineer Elliot Lanes, social media manager Erin Dumas of Dumas83, and transcription editor Morgan Musselman. Thank you all.
For more information about Creativists in Dialogue, please visit creativists.substack.com or our Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn pages. To learn more about our other projects, please visit elizabethbrucedc.com or rmichaeloliver.com.
The Creativists in Dialogue podcast is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and subscribers like you. The Theater in Community podcast series is supported in part by Humanities DC. Thanks.