Dear Entrenched American Theater:
What did you mean when you said, “Black Lives Matter”? I have heard it quoted to me and at me with no sense of what it means to you personally. The undeniable receipts of the last 8 years have left me bereft and riddled with guilt for sightlessly and tirelessly championing efforts to transform the American theater without considering whether or not I should. The trial and error of “transformation” has been on our backs, and I am heartened to see that once again we have your attention for the moment to explain to you why it cannot continue.
Since 2020, American theaters issued extraordinary promises to grapple with their demons and address latent aspects of their cultures that perpetuated many systemic inequities. Some of these institutions released statements affirming that “Black lives matter.” Lobby signs appeared and social media feeds filled with declarations of solidarity. We See You White American Theater issued a plethora of demands and some theaters pledged to confront systemic racism, diversify leadership, and reimagine an industry long criticized for excluding the very communities it claimed to serve.
Six years later, the question is no longer what these theaters said. It is what they built.
The answer, too often, is simply not enough.
Today marks one year since I exited my role as the Executive Director of a LORT theater following three years in the position which is, with some exceptions, the average shelf life of a Black executive leader in the theater industry in recent years. Today also marks a liberation day for Hana Sharif, who has served as the Artistic Director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and she is departing that position just after three years.
In the past decade a wave of new Black executive leaders arrived at predominantly white institutions only to inherit escalated financial instability, entrenched governance problems, increased staff turnover, and cultures fundamentally resistant to change. The hires are celebrated as historic appointments, then expected to almost instantly repair years of institutional neglect while navigating one of the greatest collective operational crises since the regional theater movement started.
Since Friday, the publishing of Hana Sharif’s resignation letter has drawn widespread attention across social platforms expressing a range of opinions about what this moment means for her and the theater community at large. Unfortunately, just over a month ago and two hundred plus miles away, there was news out of Pittsburgh that another Black woman would also be exiting her role along with the rest of her staff as the theater announced it would be closing and evolving into a new theater venture.
Over the last decade I have had the privilege to befriend a handful of extraordinary, experienced Black women who took the helm on the management side at established theaters across the country for the first time – they include Cal Shakes, Second Stage Theater, Marin Theater Company, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. These women were my lifeline, and their stunning example made me proud to be among them as an aspiring leader that was rooting for all of our collective success. Aside from hiring dynamic, accomplished Black women with established business acumen, these theaters would all uniformly lose their managing leaders within three years. Only two of these organizations still exist today.
The industry continues to treat these departures as individual stories rather than systemic failures. These stories have unfortunately become sensationalized narratives around negotiating identity politics rather than a measured consideration of the cultures these individuals entered and the perfunctory recruitment and retention strategies that were never made clear. The result is a revolving door. Three years has become an alarmingly familiar tenure for Black executive leaders at major regional theaters—certainly not enough time to build sustainable cultures or realize the visions they were hired to deliver. When these leaders leave, the industry asks what went wrong with them rather than what is wrong with the institution and its inability to retain new talent.
Representation became the finish line rather than the starting point.
Leadership is not sustained by symbolic appointments. It is sustained by trust, resources, and the freedom to lead, and for executive leaders of color that means time to build intentional partnerships with communities, boards, and staff that often do not look like us and do not share our lived experience.
Too often, BIPOC leaders are expected to solve decades-old institutional problems while simultaneously proving they deserve to occupy the role at all. They navigate heightened scrutiny, anonymous trivial criticism, and newly acquired perfectionism that many of their white counterparts and predecessors were never asked to meet. Their accomplishments are attributed to the institution’s reputation and their shortcomings become personal indictments of their character.
Meanwhile, the boards that hire these leaders are often allowed to escape any meaningful accountability for themselves or real dialogue about their duty of care. This reality in our industry is prevalent as I rarely see board leadership or search committees engaging in broader discourse within our theatrical community or sharing how their organizations built reliable structures of governance to support a thriving theater and its leadership.
When executive leaders arrive and depart, boards typically evaluate the individual. Rarely do they evaluate themselves. Few organizations publicly examine whether governance failures, toxic workplace cultures, unrealistic expectations, or inadequate support contributed to the breakdown. Exit interviews, when they occur, systematically disappear into confidential files rather than becoming opportunities for institutional growth and learning.
If Black lives truly mattered to American theater, institutional accountability would matter just as much as representation, boards would examine their own governance with the same rigor they apply to executive evaluation metrics, and search committees would stop recruiting Black leaders to solve problems they helped create. Funders would invest not only in hiring diverse leaders but in ensuring they have the resources, authority, mentorship, requisite onboarding, and time necessary to succeed (the Barr Foundation does this, and I am forever grateful for their leadership and investment in me). Exit interviews would become opportunities for institutional accountability instead of quiet departures whose circumstances are shrouded in secrecy and private agreements. And, finally, leadership would be measured not by symbolic firsts but by whether Black leaders are empowered to stay, grow, and thrive in environments that needed their leadership but do not deserve it.
Black leaders deserve the opportunity to remain long enough to reshape culture, cultivate future leadership, and transition on their own terms. Three-year tenures should not become the accepted lifespan of Black executive leadership. American theater cannot continue congratulating itself for diversifying leadership while quietly accepting the rapid turnover of the very people it claims to value. These failures of governance are certainly affecting non-Black leaders and other marginalized identities as well.
I no longer believe that the only meaningful change depends on convincing every legacy institution’s leadership to fulfill its flaccid promises. I have discovered that there is freedom in recognizing that not every system wants to be transformed. And if these institutions, and their entrenched leadership culture, are determined to maintain their systems of inequity and uninspired racism…let them. Perhaps now is the time to accept that our worth is not connected to our ability to fix the things we did not break.
Increasingly, I have chosen to find hope elsewhere: in supporting creative leaders building new ventures, personally leading a consulting firm that will reshape leadership cultures through executive integration, championing training programs preparing the next generation with next practices, and finding communities imagining institutions that were never constrained by the assumptions of predominantly white organizations.
Perhaps the future of American theater will not be defined by who finally earns a seat at someone else’s table. Perhaps it will be defined by those courageous enough to build entirely new tables or occupy spaces with no tables at all. Lauren Turner Hines and her work as the founder of the André Cailloux Center has already given us a clarion call and a blueprint to “make something that is truly ours.” To be clear: this is an invitation. If you feel as I feel then perhaps it is time for us to exit and build together.
To the next generation of Black leaders entering this profession: I still believe your leadership is needed and worthy. But I also hope you understand something I had to learn the hard way — your value is not determined by whether legacy institutions recognize it. Your responsibility is not to sacrifice your humanity in pursuit of their validation.
Sometimes leadership means staying and fighting for change and sometimes leadership means knowing exactly when to leave environments that no longer serve us.
We must consider that the most revolutionary act is not transforming an institution that refuses to change, but creating one that never required your diminishment in the first place.