For a brief window of time, OSF was blessed to have two artistic directors at once: the incoming Nataki Garrett and the outgoing Bill Rauch. This Q&A with the two of them was condensed from a longer podcast discussion, which can be accessed at soundcloud.com/osfashland and on iTunes.
Julie Cortez: What is this time of transition like for each of you?
Nataki Garrett: It’s hard to say because I’m in it. I’m doing what you do in transition, which is trying to make sure that I’m listening and looking and learning. I’m asking questions based on what it is that I’m witnessing. I’m trying to provide as much space as possible to hear from people about their experience as well as their hopes and dreams. I’m between two homes and will be living apart from my husband for the bulk of the summer as we try to figure out how we’re going to convene, here, in Ashland. You know, so it’s tumultuous. But it’s what transitions are like.
Bill Rauch: Tumultuous is a good word. I feel the same way. I feel tremendous sadness about leaving OSF and Ashland. I just love this company and this town and this audience, with all my heart. So, that’s very complicated, but it’s balanced by my excitement about Nataki’s appointment, my absolute joy about the shining future of OSF under your leadership.
NG: Thank you.
JC: We still have a lot of 2019 left. How does the season feel for you two from your transitional perspectives and as directors of individual productions?
BR: I’m so proud of the work this season. It’s the last season that I will oversee as artistic director. It adds another emotional layer, but I feel so excited and energized by the quality of the art on our stages right now. And I’m still trying to learn, even though it’s my last season. I want to keep growing and keep learning. It’s about digging in and growing and learning, always.
NG: It’s an amazing season, and the stories themselves hold their own water. They are compelling, and they are adventurous, and they are terrifying, and they are deeply moving, and they display all of the things that attracted me to OSF in the first place. And what I’m excited for, as I continue to learn about OSF through this season and the next season, what’s uncovered for me, is how this team works: the artistic team, what Marketing does, how Development works through this, what Production does, how stage managers deal with this, what’s happening on the stage, off the stage, behind the scenes, in the executive offices—everywhere. I get to learn as we work through. We do the thing that we come to do here every day, which is make the most spectacular theatre possible.
JC: Nataki, this is your third time directing How to Catch Creation. What have you learned about the play? What do you love about it? What keeps drawing you back?
NG: Well, what I love the most is, I love Christina’s writing. I love Christina Anderson as a playwright. I love her voice, and I love her imprint on the world for the story that she’s telling. I love these people who are reflective of the people who raised me and the communities that I was raised in, with the value set that I was raised with, that these people are reflective of that. What I love the most about the play, and what I really learned—I thought I knew it intellectually, but to really feel it— is how do you write a play about what it means to be Black in America in this time, that does not require the primary focus of that work to be about how you’ve been victimized? You remove the status quo from the conversation, and you make your existence the status quo. And that’s what she does so masterfully without alienating or pointing fingers. It’s like these people get up every day, and they have a cup of coffee, and they try to figure out how not to break each other’s hearts. At the end of the day, they have a glass of wine and talk through what their lives were like that day, just like everybody. And the revolution of the play is how normal people get to be as they embody moments about love and longing and loss, and what they want to leave behind in their legacy. And I just think that’s brilliant. I’ve been thankful for the actors that I’ve worked with because they’ve taught me so much more about why I love these characters. I want to have dinner with them and hang out and have one too many glasses of wine with them and scream about politics. I want to hang out with these people because they’re people I know. I love that.
JC: When we spoke last summer for your How to Catch Creation director interview, you talked about the characters who are in their 40s, and your own feelings as a 40-something in terms of the regrets any of us might have for what we haven’t yet accomplished at this point in our lives, and the sense that in your 40s you’re also still young enough to start over and have a new chapter. Are there any new resonances for you, in light of this significant life change that you’re going through right now?
NG: Yeah, and I actually think that you can start over in your 70s and 90s, too—that it’s never too late to learn how to become the person that you’re trying to become, or that you are intended to become. I meet this job, and the opportunity for leadership at the largest theatre operation in North America, at a time of great transition in my own life. My husband and I have been pursuing parenthood since we met a little bit less than 10 years ago, and so that’s on the horizon. I meet this moment of leadership at a point in my professional life where I am clear that, while I am still learning, and while I am still growing, and while I still have to keep myself moving toward learning and growing on a daily basis, hourly, minutely, that I also know that I have the capacity for this work, that I have the ability to do it well, and that I have the right heart and head-space to be able to do it with grace. And that is what allows me to keep going. So, will I know more 10 years from now, when I’m in my late 50s? Yes. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to know more 20 years from now and 30 years from now, and really, as I unfold and unpack myself, I’ll get to know more and more and more.
JC: Bill, speaking of starting anew, what has it been like directing the world premiere Mother Road and creating La Comedia of Errors— something that is completely new for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival—and doing both of those things as you get ready to start your new life chapter in New York?
BR: One of the absolute privileges of being artistic director of any theatre and being a director at OSF is that I get choose what stories I tell. I’ve gotten to do that, so this year I have had the honor of directing a world premiere by Octavio Solis, a new play that tries to continue the story of The Grapes of Wrath, looking at this particular moment in our country’s society as we are shifting from a white majority country to a country in which there is no racial majority. I feel that Octavio’s piece explores that in such a beautiful, burnished, meaningful way. To get to work on that and then to work on a Shakespeare play I love, that I directed here as a guest artist so many years ago back in 2004, and to get to work on a new adaptation, our first ever Play On! translation, our first deep dive into bilingual theatre, and the project is touring to community centers in our own backyard—both projects are so exciting to me.
JC: Bill, I imagine in this time before you move off to New York, and you fully move here, Nataki, there’s probably a lot of wisdom swapping happening between you two right now. Is there one essential piece of advice you’d each give to the other that you could share with us, as you get ready to set off on these new paths?
BR: I shared this with Nataki earlier today, and I will say it again. My primary piece of advice is listen. Listen deeply. Listen some more. And then, after you’ve done all that listening, follow your heart, and it will serve this so beautifully.
NG: Thank you for that, and I will say that your legacy is something that unfolds over time, that it is not the last word that was left as you walked out of the door. Your legacy will not be fully realized for 10 years. We won’t even know the complete and total impact of all of the work that you’ve done here. So, as you make this transition, keep in mind that you made these impacts so that they would be beneficial for generations and that sometimes it takes a little bit longer to allow that to be recognized.
BR: Thank you for that.
JC: Is there one thing, at this moment, you would most like to communicate to OSF’s audience?
BR: For me, it is gratitude from the bottom of my heart for welcoming me and my family to this theatre and to this community, for being so adventurous in your tastes as an audience, for embracing projects with such open hearts that I never would have imagined you would embrace, necessarily. And just for an extraordinary journey over these 12 years. Thank you.
NG: And for me, it is thank-you for welcoming me and my husband to my new community and my new home. I appreciate your stewardship and your love for what OSF has been to you. I appreciate your continued love as we venture further into the future. I ask that you begin to envision the impact that you’re making now to create a space for the future of OSF, and that we will do that together. And part of that is to be welcoming and to be open and to hold your hand out, extending it toward those people who don’t necessarily know that this is a place for them. As they arrive—because with a new leader, there are new people who feel like they are newly welcomed—as they arrive, I ask that you make sure that they feel welcomed and that you understand that some of the work that we do is to make sure that they feel welcomed as well as you, and that change and evolution and the growth of a theatre is not the denial of what has been. In fact, it is on the foundation of what has been that we can continue to move toward what will be. It is because of what you’ve experienced here that we move forward, not despite it. And I look forward to moving forward with this community, with the audience, with the staff, with the Company, with all the things that are OSF and Ashland. I look forward to moving into the future. I prepare for its bountiful blessing as we move toward it.
BR: OSF audience, do you realize how lucky you are that Nataki Garrett is our sixth artistic director? Oh my goodness!
NG: Thank you!
For tickets and information on 2019 productions directed by Nataki and Bill, visit How to Catch Creation, Mother Road and La Comedia of Errors.