Last winter, I sat in a room of 13 artists talking frankly about whether or not we’d have the funds to bring my company’s current project to its world premiere. The conversation started with the presentation of a budget estimate for the show and ended with a frank conversation with all the artists in the room about how much money each contractor personally needed to create the show at the scale we’d been developing.
Without that honest conversation with our workers about the economics of production, we wouldn’t have gotten a clear sense of their personal buy-in to the project, their material needs, and their dreams for the piece. This inclusive conversation, the last item on the agenda for our workshop week, was intended as a large gesture toward one of our core values: company care.
The theatre industry’s definition of care work is restrictive and reactive. Often care work is relegated to company management or HR departments. But it’s more holistic than those two categories. The drive for cultural institutions to focus on project-based output over people-centered practices has led to organizational models in which the use of power is left uninterrogated, and care for artists and arts workers is provided only in order to make the work happen, as opposed to making the workers thrive. Creating art under capitalism does not serve artists and arts workers, and in the coming years it’s going to get harder. While we need to find business strategies that will keep us stable under fascism, we need to build management practices that help us actualize the world we want to see.
Framing care work as work that puts power into the hands of those working with you can transform organizational systems in ways that make for a better theatre ecosystem. Businesses, collectives, and artists that build their production processes, administrative practices, and artistic seasons around providing holistic care for their workers create strong foundations that ensure sustainability.
Here are three examples from my own practice that I hope you find useful.
Circles and Loops
Liberation is at the core of artmaking, so creating institutions that center liberatory practices gives staff the agency to create work with clarity and ownership. At Obvious Agency, one of the country’s only worker-owned performance cooperatives, our relationship to liberation is in our name: We make your agency obvious. The most notable element of care we enact at Obvious Agency is our clear and transparent system for decision-making, in both our administrative and artistic processes.
We work non-hierarchically using a Circles Model: Each department of our company is organized into a circle, each with its own clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Circles are autonomous; no other department or individual has a say over a circle’s decisions. When a decision needs to be made between two circles or falls outside of the scope of an individual circle, we move those conversations to our General Circle, which includes representatives from all circles. For example, our Money Circle is in charge of generating income for the year, and holds decision-making power over whether or not we apply for certain grants, the kinds of consulting gigs our organization takes on, even how we price tickets for our productions. If a grant is specifically around residency for a new piece, the decision then moves to our Artistic Research and Development Circle, who determine whether we have capacity to develop the piece. Because circles are often working independently of one another, without hierarchical forms of oversight, it’s important that we clearly note when other circles need to be brought into decision-making so that we don’t stay too isolated.
This organizational model is in practice for our current production, Space Opera, a theatrical table-top role-playing game. Rather than leaving our contracted artists out of important artistic and producing decisions, everyone involved is a part of a circle representing a different element of the production. We have a Game Design Circle, which oversees the development of the rules that drive the piece; a Theatrical Circle, which handles all aspects of the design and comprises performers and designers; an Administration Circle, which oversees scheduling and communication with artists and designers; and a Hospitality and Care Circle, which oversees the audience experience, partnerships with community organizations, and company management. This model has allowed our contractors a significant amount of say in the elements of production they are most affected by, and has led to a cohesive and artistically daring product (we’ll premiere it in June).
Making these models work well takes a lot of time, trial, and error, and many long meetings to figure out exactly who is making what decision. But the end result—of having full trust in a circle to complete their work and loop you in when necessary—is worth it. Not every company can adopt the Circles Model, but I think every organization can find ways to be more specific about who is making what decision and how. Sharing and collaborating on decision-making processes builds trust among staff and gives them the agency to do their jobs without constantly having to look over their shoulders.
Office Hours
I became the creative director of a small, all-volunteer collective in 2018 called Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists (PAPA), originally formed in 2014 by a small group of AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) actors hoping to create a more equitable landscape for our community in the area. Before I became creative director, PAPA had hosted talent showcases and readings, but the group was struggling to gain traction beyond its membership, and there was unresolved tension among members about the organization’s mission. PAPA had a small annual budget of less than $10,000 but a lot of big hopes for programming. When I stepped into leadership, I held two months of office hours with any AAPI performer, designer, or administrator based in Philadelphia who wanted to talk about their ideas for PAPA. People had strong opinions about the genres we should be supporting, organizational processes we should adopt, and specific programs we could start. At some meetings we felt like we were battling, others singing in harmony.
I credit the honesty and diversity of those office hours to holistic care, not only on our side but on the part of the participants. Even in the most adversarial meetings, it was clear to me that people came to talk to us because they cared, and as the leader of a member service organization, I needed to hear from them how they wanted to be served. Those meetings formed the basis of how I built the organization. Our longest-running programs, membership engagement practices, and committee-based model grew from those initial meetings.
In the years since, PAPA has increased its budget to six figures, its membership has increased from 20 to 200, and it now produces several recurring programs focused on membership engagement and professional development, as well as virtual festivals and multidisciplinary devised works. While I don’t do office hours any more, we hold four General Body meetings a year, where anyone in our membership can show up and offer thoughts or feedback on specific programs. I have an open-door policy with members who have ideas about new programs or committees they’d like to start.
Personal Investment
I’ve always split my work between part-time arts administration or producing, and directing work. Like so many, I struggle to find a balance between my administrative and creative life. After seeing the impact holistic care made on the other arts businesses I worked for, I started wondering what care would look like for myself as a freelance arts worker.
I realized that a lot of arts organizations hire out niche administrative roles to cover tasks they don’t have capacity for, like bookkeeping or business consulting. In 2020, I decided to experiment with doing this for myself. I asked one of my dear friends, Mel Hsu, the best arts administrator I know, to take on what we’ve lovingly started calling “henchmen” work: drafting emails, scheduling meetings, blocking out time for breaks, and generally being on the front lines of any freelance offers; providing accountability for and occasionally assisting on long-term personal care tasks like figuring out health insurance and changing bank accounts; strategic planning and self-reflection around my personal career; and enacting “tech protocols” where we temporarily shift all of my care systems as I head into tech and preview for productions I direct. Mel works about 10-15 hours per month and we negotiate her rate yearly.
This investment in holistic care for myself in my business has drastically expanded my capacity—and more than paid for itself. Since hiring Mel, I’ve increased my income by 20-30 percent a year and taken meaningful steps toward creating a healthier work-life-balance grounded in my overall goals for my life. By creating a role that looks specifically at the interconnectedness of my personal life and career, I’ve been able to strengthen both in a meaningful way. It’s the kind of care we should all give and expect at any scale of artmaking.
Cat Ramirez (they/he/she) is a director and producer who loves logistical puzzles, community meals, and bisexual lighting. Their work empowers their inner child who was socialized to be ashamed of having opinions. Cat is the creative director for Philly Asian Performing Artists (PAPA), the cooperative operations manager for Obvious Agency, and a board member of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation.
