The story of two friends who dreamed of bringing the kind of world-class theater usually found in big cities to a town of only 15,000 people.
Featuring: Erin Anderson-Whiting & Kit McKay, Co-Founders of Parallel 45 Theatre
The story of two friends who dreamed of bringing the kind of world-class theater usually found in big cities to a town of only 15,000 people.
Featuring: Erin Anderson-Whiting & Kit McKay, Co-Founders of Parallel 45 Theatre
This is Erin…
My name is Erin Anderson Whiting…
And this is Kit…
My name is Kit McKay…
And ten years ago these two women did something a lot of people might have seen as…
Well, Erin sums it up nicely.
Are we crazy? Wait… What are we thinking?
They decided to open a cutting-edge professional theater company…
The kind that you’d expect in New York or Chicago...
In a town of only 15,000 people.
But here’s the thing…
The place they chose is no ordinary town.
It’s an artsy little haven tucked inside the outset pinky of Michigan’s famous waving hand…
Right on two gleaming Lake Michigan bays.
Traverse City, Michigan Traverse City, Michigan
This is the story of two entrepreneurs who dreamed of bringing world class theater to a very specific spot on the globe.
The 45th parallel.
I’m Tommy Andres and this is “Creative Coast”
((THEME MUSIC))
Since this is the first episode of this podcast, let me tell you what it’s all about.
Traverse City, Michigan is a magical little place that has… in the last decade or so… become a magnet for creative talent from all over the world.
The natural beauty of all four seasons on the Great Lakes…
The vibrant restaurant and arts scene…
And the 40 different wineries and 12 craft breweries...
Have lured many young artists and visionaries from expensive big cities to this affordable oasis.
Over the next twelve episodes…
We’re going to talk to some of the creative entrepreneurs who have made Traverse City their home…
And who have brought with them exciting new ideas…
Interests…
Inspiration….
And innovations.
Our first episode is about a place that has become a Northern Michigan institution.
The Parallel 45 Theater Company.
(THEME MUSIC POST/FADE)
Many of life’s most consequential moments are enveloped by fairly pedestrian circumstances…
For friends Kit McKay and Erin Andreson… life changed forever over a dinner.
At a sushi restaurant Called Koi.
(4:57) in Chicago in 2008.
(START MUSIC)
Erin makes one of her visits.
I was in Chicago for work where I traveled often.
She’s visiting because she’s in love with someone in Chicago. And she stays with me. And we would plot and plan how, you know, she was going to get this guy.
Kit is going to Northwestern at the time… Getting her masters in theater directing.
Here’s Kit talking about Erin.
And she sits me down and she has this look in her eye. And she asks me what was I thinking about for my next steps in my career. Which felt really official and professional and not us at all.
And here’s Erin talking about Kit.
She was talking about the various job offers she was already getting from theaters all over the country - some pretty prestigious, fancy opportunities.
Maybe I’ll stay in Chicago, do the storefront scene for a while, maybe I’ll go back to New York and get a fellowship. Maybe I’ll go to Austin or Boulder - one of the larger burgeoning theater areas.
And I said, ‘ok, that’s all great and congratulations, that’s wonderful you’re getting all these offers. What if - instead of taking one of those super fancy jobs somewhere across the country - what if you came to Traverse City and we started our own company here?’
And it took me about two seconds to realize that’s what I was looking for. That I wanted to go home.
That was the moment.
(MUSIC POST)
The path to that dinner started with formation... and snaked through the cultivation... of a decade-long friendship.
When Erin and Kit were teenagers, they were both students at the Interlochen Arts Academy…
A boarding school at the world-renown Interlochen Center for the Arts just 15 miles outside of Traverse City.
The school has pumped out some major talent.
Musicians like Norah Jones, Josh Grobin and Jewel.
Actors like Terry Crews and Felicity Huffman
And writers and directors like “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan.
Here’s Erin...
When I went to Interlochen, my entire world split open and got about ten times bigger in all the best ways.
Kit says Interlochen felt a world away from the Indianapolis suburb she had grown up in.
It got me out of a very conservative, straight-laced environment and allowed me to sort of fly my freak flag a little bit.
It was at Interlochen where Erin and Kit first met.
Kit and I were at Interlochen together for one year. // And I only knew her from afar. She was a theater major and I was there for creative writing. So I sort of knew of her and thought that she was very cool like all those theater people. And I was intrigued.
The feeling was mutual. Here’s Kit.
I was jealous of her because she was super cool and had a super cool boyfriend. And she was jealous of me because I was super cool and had a super gay boyfriend. And we were sort of satellites circling the same theater group, never really connecting but always sort of… gazing lovingly afar with jealousy.
But Erin and Kit didn’t start hanging out until a couple of years later...
...when we both ended up in college in New York at Sarah Lawrence.
...that’s when we became really close personal friends.
Like, REALLY close.
Erin and I have never not been in touch. // When I went abroad in college she would send me letters updating me about episodes of Party of Five and I have them to this day. They are long and they matter.
(MUSIC STARTS)
After college, Erin started working in publishing in Manhattan.
(18:04) I got a lot of free books.
And Kit was trying to make it in the city as a theater director.
Absolutely. Yeah, New York was where it was at.
But after a few years, the lustre of New York rubbed off for Erin.
(22:56) I just reached a point where I realized, ‘Ok, I’m looking at my 30s and I don’t know that I’m ever going to be able to do a lot of the things that I love doing in my life if I stay in New York. It’s unlikely that I’m going to make enough money to not have to live with roommates. It’s unlikely that I’m going to ever be able to get away to a place where I can hike and be outdoors, which I love to do, on a regular basis if I stay in New York. You know, all these things I loved I was finding myself saying, ‘Well, you could do those things back in Michigan.’ And I kept trying to argue myself out of it. Like, well yeah, but that’s where you came from and you can’t just like go home… like you’re conceding.
(TOMMY ON TAPE) That’s funny, it’s very relatable to me because there’s very little you can do to show that you’re successful as a young person except where you live geographically. And I remember I moved to New York too like a year or two after college and when I would come back people would say, ‘Oh, what are you up to these days?’ And I would say, ‘Oh, I live in New York.’ And just saying you lived in New York was like a sign of success to people who stayed.
Totally. // If you leave a small town you want to like victoriously leave, do incredible things in this exotic seeming place and then maybe come home and visit and I don’t know, feel superior. You’re right. it’s like something on the resume that needs no defense or explanation. It’s like, ‘Oh, well, you’re in New York so you must be doing ok.
(MUSIC POST OR TRANSITION)
Erin moved back to Traverse City in 2003 and started working in fundraising at Interlochen…
And Kit eventually left the Big Apple too for grad school.
I ended up getting my MFA at Northwestern in Chicago, so I made the leap from New York to Chicago.
So it was under these circumstances that two talented and hungry friends… both literally and figuratively... ended up sitting across from each other in a Chicago sushi joint discussing Erin’s proposition.
(ECHO EFFECT) What if you came to Traverse City and we started our own company here?
(MUSIC EFFECT)
Kit was thrilled with the idea.
I had all of the circles of people I needed to create that company. All I needed was the place.
But she also had some concerns.
My one question to Erin was, is there an audience for the kind of work that you and I enjoy. And she said absolutely. And she cited the film festival’s success at that point.
The next step was to come up with a mission…
And a name.
(40:24) We thought for a long time about names. // We thought about what is the thing that is sort of a touchstone for most people about our area. And one of those things is the 45th Parallel… runs just north of Traverse City - runs through Michigan and continues on around the globe. The 45th Parallel is significant because it is halfway between the equator and the North Pole.
(2:13:55) We have three core values: Home - where we are. Being part of Traverse City’s success story is the first one. // that’s why we’re called Parallel 45. It’s the location of where we are on the map. (2:14:37)
(42:22) I give so much credit to Kit for directing the why of Parallel 45.
Professionalism: Talented, trained artists you can count on who are coming from all over the place including Traverse City and um… Oh my God, how am I losing the third one? Give me a second. What’s our third core value? (laughs)
(43:09) The way you can boil it down really is familiar stories for the adventurous mind.
Oh, reinvention. Duh. And our third core value is reinvention. Every story has a chance for a second look.
Now, starting a professional theater is no easy task.
But there were some other complicating factors.
Remember how I said that faithful dinner where Kit and Erin decided to take the leap was in 2008?
(GREAT RECESSION NEWS CLIP)
(51:19) We started Parallel 45 - started raising money for it - in early 2009. So that was a really financially shakey time to be starting a new endeavor, a non-profit arts endeavor, in a small town that had been hit really hard by what had happened in the real estate industry and market.
We were gutsy. We had our eyes on the prize. We were not going to let the recession even touch us and that has everything to do with Erin Anderson who was raising funds at a time when everyone’s portfolio was tanked. And it has everything to do with how scrappy we were at that time. I have to give props to our production manager Linda Osborne who was sourcing everything she could and coming up with very very inventive ways to create theater where we didn’t have any state-of-the-art equipment. She and her team of designers would make theaters out of garbage. Actual garbage. We had six lights hung on chair stands for years. And so it was about that scrappy, Chicago, gritty, you can do it without bells and whistles attitude. And also Erin Anderson who had the tenacity and chutzpah to ask for money at a time when no one had any.
Another complicating factor?
Even though Kit was an accomplished theater director and Erin was a master at fundraising…
Neither one of them knew the first thing about how to actually run a theater company.
So Kit decided… in the midst of kicking off this new venture… and in the midst of a recession… to go back to grad school for a second Master’s Degree in theater management.
And not just any grad school.
Yale.
(2:03:33) And by the grace of the universe, they accepted me.
And in the meantime, how are you balancing setting up this theater with going to grad school?
I’m exhausted! It’s the most… talk about the culture of exhaustion. Yale School of Drama is the most exhausting place on the planet and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. (2:04:11)
So Kit is in New Haven, Connecticut and Erin is in Traverse city…
And they’re having this sort of long distance entrepreneurial relationship.
Raising money...
Selecting the shows…
Setting up the venues.
And in the summer of 2010…
While Kit is still in grad school at Yale…
Parallel 45 stages its first show.
(START MUSIC)
(46:46) August 19th, 2010. It was a Thursday night.
(2:16:10) We brought in ten actors, three technicians and designers, all of whom traveled for free and got paid nothing. And they came for ten days - we all lived in one house. // And we put on a production of “Our Town” in an old city hall.
We were in a venue that had no air conditioning. It was unusually hot for Northern Michigan, it was almost 100 degrees. So it’s hot, it’s closed in.
We bought a bunch of old wicker furniture and put it in the round and put lamps and rugs and cushions so every audience member was sitting in the round in their own piece of furniture.
It stripped it down to its essence. It was very minimal. It was visually beautiful.
it was really beautiful.
I’m extremely nervous because you want everything to go so well and you’re wondering who is going to show up for this and what is their reaction going to be?
From Erin’s end she was scared are we going to get audience members? Are we going to get money in the door? I was worried about are we telling the story in an exacting way? Is this a successful venture? Is this a great piece of art and are my artists believing it’s a great piece of art?
And I was so nervous and excited I could not sit in the audience. I had to watch the show from this little vestibule near the stairs to the balcony so I could see the audience reaction, but I didn’t have to arrange my expression, you know, to fit that. I could just experience their experience from afar because I couldn’t handle it (laughs).
In the third act when we go to the graveyard a thunderstorm came through and there was this huge crash of thunder during the darkest period of the piece. It was really magical. (2:17:28)
(MUSIC POST)
When that ended and the audience stood to their feet, I remember thinking ‘this is gonna work.’ Like, it just confirmed we know what we’re doing, we just have to keep going.
(LET’S TRY A DOUBLE POST HERE -- I’LL EXPLAIN)
Erin and Kit’s theater company grew and grew.
And eventually they were both able to leave their day jobs to run Parallel 45 full time.
And Erin says that transition helped her come to a realization about vocation and identity.
(18:46) I definitely had the assumption that what you loved to do needed to be separate from how you make a living and get a paycheck. I just assumed that was true. It seemed like what I was seeing around me and it just sort of made sense. Like art and what you might love to do from a creative perspective was like this pure separate thing not to be sullied by getting a paycheck or having any of those kinds of considerations attached to it. That in order for it to be pure and real and true it needed to be this side thing. And it didn’t occur to me for a really long time that that didn’t have to be true, that there was a way to marry what you love doing with a way to make a living and it didn’t actually corrupt the thing just because you figured out a way to get paid to do it. In fact, it’s better because you actually have your full energy to put toward the thing if you’re not so busy doing your dayjob. And not everyone, of course, can have the luxury of doing that, it’s a very difficult thing to accomplish, but it is a challenge for most artists and creatives is how do you have any energy left at the end of the day when your day job takes all of it. And it very quickly can become just a hobby. Or a hobby you used to have. Or something that you like to think about you used to do. Or now you just like to watch other people do. Like, there’s sort of a distancing that can happen just because of life, and I decided I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to figure out a way to actually live because I thought what I might be able to create artistically and creatively has value. And it’s almost like as artists I think we sometimes are afraid to say that. Like by saying something has value we’re putting a judgment on it or we’re saying it’s better than this or not as good as that. And it’s just to say confidently that this has value and I’m not afraid to put it up there against all these other things that people get paid to do that also have value. And yes, they are different, but they are no less valuable. (21:40)
(START MUSIC)
Over the past ten years…
Kit and Erin have brought in more than 160 professional theater artists from all over the world to stage 22 productions.
There’s been financial success…
Parallel 45 has grown from a budget of $14,000 in that first year…
To more than $700,000 in 2020.
And during the 2019 summer season, the theater company sold 4,000 tickets…
But there’s also been critical success.
P45’s 2017 production of Alice in Wonderland was nominated for a Wilde Award for Best Play.
But one of the most striking things about P45 to me is this little fact.
Here’s Kit.
2:39:35 P45 is a marriage maker. // 2:41:36 While working on the play “Our Town” in our first summer, I worked with an actor named Noah // and he made me very nervous. // we ended up getting together on that show and sticking together and having kids together.
And here’s Erin.
I met my husband because of Parallel 45. // We met in 2012, so our third year of the company. He was an actor who came to play a role in a production we were doing of the Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan // and my husband Ben was the actor playing Smea, Captain Hook’s lackey. // (1:19:41) It didn’t take long. We met in the summer of 2012 and we were engaged in January 2013.
P45 is just like a hotbed of intense romance.
(MUSIC POST)
In the summer of 2019, Parallel 45 moved into a brand new venue.
The theater company worked with Traverse City Parks and Rec to raise money to fix up an old amphitheater at the Grand Traverse County Civic Center.
In its ninth year, Parallel 45 got a permanent home.
But a theater forged in the midst of a financial crisis is now weathering another one.
Here’s Erin.
(51:47) So having gotten through that, maybe that prepared me in some way to feel a little optimism in our current moment - in our COVID-19 moment - in that I feel like, okay, we’ve been here before
(MUSIC START)
Erin and Kit, like everyone else in the world, began watching a global pandemic spread across continents and leap oceans…
And they made the painful decision to cancel the 2020 season.
Here’s Kit.
(2:26:30) It was clear to me from an early moment that this was going to be impossible. And so we made the decision on the early end knowing it would not be safe to fulfill our mission this summer.
What did it feel like to have to cancel it? That moment of sending out the message and putting it up on your website that you guys were going to close down?
Like a break up. Like a really hard break up. // Well we’re definitely mourning our 10th anniversary loss.
Here’s Erin.
What I’m sad people won’t experience this year is… the experience of being outside at our venue is really lovely on a summer night. We wanted to create the best of both worlds which was how can we have an intimate setting where you’re never more than three rows from the action, where the audience feels super immersed and engaged, and yet not be indoors? Because most outdoor theater is you’re on a blanket on a hillside watching a stage super far away. And that’s not the kind of theater we do. We’ve always done really immersive stuff with unique staging, and we didn’t want to lose that just because we were going to go outside and have it be an experience where people are half paying attention, really far away, it’s more like a concert. We just didn’t want to do that, so we created an outdoor theater that is still set up for that intimate kind of exchange. It’s completely covered, so the audience is covered in case it rains. Unless it’s raining sideways or lightning, we don’t have to cancel. But you can come early, you can picnic on the lawn, we have a bar setup, you can get wine, you can bring your own food, get food from food trucks. You can hang out for the 90 minutes before and then you can take your seat, see a great show, // the breeze is sort of going - these saddle span tents, they look like upside down Pringle chips, really - and the breeze sort of goes in and out under it. So you get all your truss, so you have all your lighting, all your sound, all the stuff you need, but you still have the wonderful breezes of a summer night // the stars come out, and get to be outdoors. It’s just really magical, and I will be very excited to get back to that.
(MUSIC POST)
Kit and Erin are sad, but they’re not afraid.
(52:00) We know how to pair down to just our essence. We know how to do good work and we know that there are people who value that. And if we can just hang on, I think we can make it through.
They’re confident Parallel 45 will survive to see another summer...
And that this time of crisis, suffering and fear will inspire many artists to create new work.
Work that…
Once the virus is contained…
They can share under the tent with those wonderful Traverse City summer breezes.
(MUSIC KICK)
If you would like to learn more about Parallel 45, visit parallel45.org.
---
Creative Coast is a podcast series brought to you by Traverse Connect…
the Grand Traverse Region’s Economic Development Organization…
and is produced by Airloom Media.
This podcast series is made possible thanks to generous support and funding from the Michigan Film and Digital Media Office at Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation.
You can visit Traverse Connect’s website at traverseconnect.com.
RANDOM NOTES - NOT PART OF SCRIPT:
The experience of being outside at our venue is really lovely on a summer night. We wanted to create the best of both worlds which is how can we have an intimate setting where you’re never more than three rows from the action, where the audience feels super immersed and engaged, and yet not be indoors. Because most outdoor theater is you’re on a blanket on a hillside watching a stage super far away. And that’s not the kind of theater we do. We’ve always done really immersive stuff with unique staging, and we didn’t want to lose that just because we were going to go outside and have it be an experience where people are half paying attention, really far away, it’s more like a concert. We just didn’t want to do that, so we created an outdoor theater that is still set up for that intimate kind of exchange. It’s completely covered, so the audience is covered in case it rains. Unless it’s raining sideways or lightning, we don’t have to cancel. But you can come early, you can picnic on the lawn, we have a bar setup, you can get wine, you can bring your own food, get food from food trucks. You can hang out for the 90 minutes before and then you can take your seat, see a great show, the stars come out, the breeze is sort of going - these saddle span tents, they look like upside down Pringle chips, really - and the breeze sort of goes in and out under it. So you get all your truss, so you have all your lighting, all your sound, all the stuff you need, but you still have the wonderful breezes of a summer night and get to be outdoors. It’s just really magical.
who ended up being my husband
We were so lucky we were on the hunt for a new venue our lovely old venue closed in 2016 and we were on hunt for anyone who would let us do theatre. Approached by head of parks and rec who let us know about this theatre in the back of the park. Had no idea. Got specialists and it was perfect for outdoor theatre. We put up tent and state of art seating. You are protected but can see the sunset and feel the breeze. Inside and outside. Perfect miracle of things coming together to make that work.
It took us a few years to realize if we were going to dive in deeper and get bigger audiences, we were going to have to go to the major metropolitan area of Traverse City. And we made that move about two years later.
TRANSCRIBED BITES (these are randomly tossed in here for now):
I am Erin Anderson Whiting. I am 41 years old and I live in Traverse City, Michigan and I am the executive director of the Parallel 45 theater company.
We should’ve got our stories straight before we said we were talking. This is how you find the discrepancies is because ‘well, she said.’
I can actually think about a very specific dinner in Chicago in 2008 at a great sushi restaurant. That was the moment. Kit and I were having dinner together. I was in Chicago for work where I traveled often. She was there for graduate school, she was at Northwestern finishing her masters in directing at the time and I had a proposition for her. She was talking about the various job offers she was already getting from theaters all over the country - some pretty prestigious, fancy opportunities - and weighing what type of organization she wanted to work for and the kind of theater she wanted to produce. And I said, ‘ok, that’s all great and congratulations, that’s wonderful you’re getting all these offers. What if - instead of taking one of those super fancy jobs somewhere across the country - what if you came to Traverse City and we started our own company here?’ And she thought about it for about half a beat and she said yes.
Kit and I were at Interlochen together for one year. We overlapped for a year at the arts academy. And I only knew her from afar. She was a theater major and I was there for creative writing. So I sort of knew of her and thought that she was very cool like all those theater people. And I was intrigued. I wanted to be her friend, but that actually came a couple of years later when we both ended up in college in New York at Sarah Lawrence. And that’s really where our friendship began.
I was a writer from a young age, so more on the introverted side - creative but not a performer. So I was very interested in looking at the world from different angles and processing that and creating something from it. Then when it came to putting it out there I was very happy to do it on the page and kind of disappear into the background. And then when I went to Interlochen my entire world just sort of split open and got about ten times bigger in all the best ways. And that’s because I was with other young artists from literally all over the world who all had a commonality to pursue something that they loved desperately - probably couldn’t even explain why - and they wanted to make that their life’s work. And when you have a bunch of passionate adolescents who are passionate anyway, but you put on it also that kind of focus and ambition, it’s a really exciting place to be. So I went from a tiny little town outside of Traverse City called Elk Rapids, where I lived, and went to Interlochen where suddenly I’m with people from every corner of the world, some from huge cities, some from rural areas. It kind of blew my mind, really.
17:53 My New York experience
(18:46) I definitely had the assumption that what you loved to do needed to be separate from how you make a living and get a paycheck. I just assumed that was true. It seemed like what I was seeing around me and it just sort of made sense. Like art and what you might love to do from a creative perspective was like this pure separate thing not to be sullied by getting a paycheck or having any of those kinds of considerations attached to it. That in order for it to be pure and real and true it needed to be this side thing. And it didn’t occur to me for a really long time that that didn’t have to be true, that there was a way to marry what you love doing with a way to make a living and it didn’t actually corrupt the thing just because you figured out a way to get paid to do it. In fact, it’s better because you actually have your full energy to put toward the thing if you’re not so busy doing your dayjob. And not everyone, of course, can have the luxury of doing that, it’s a very difficult thing to accomplish, but it is a challenge for most artists and creatives is how do you have any energy left at the end of the day when your day job takes all of it. And it very quickly can become just a hobby. Or a hobby you used to have. Or something that you like to think about you used to do. Or now you just like to watch other people do. Like, there’s sort of a distancing that can happen just because of life, and I decided I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to figure out a way to actually live because I thought what I might be able to create artistically and creatively has value. And it’s almost like as artists I think we sometimes are afraid to say that. Like by saying something has value we’re putting a judgment on it or we’re saying it’s better than this or not as good as that. And it’s just to say confidently that this has value and I’m not afraid to put it up there against all these other things that people get paid to do that also have value. And yes, they are different, but they are no less valuable. (21:40)
What I’m sad people won’t experience this year is… the experience of being outside at our venue is really lovely on a summer night. We wanted to create the best of both worlds which is how can we have an intimate setting where you’re never more than three rows from the action, where the audience feels super immersed and engaged, and yet not be indoors. Because most outdoor theater is you’re on a blanket on a hillside watching a stage super far away. And that’s not the kind of theater we do. We’ve always done really immersive stuff with unique staging, and we didn’t want to lose that just because we were going to go outside and have it be an experience where people are half paying attention, really far away, it’s more like a concert. We just didn’t want to do that, so we created an outdoor theater that is still set up for that intimate kind of exchange. It’s completely covered, so the audience is covered in case it rains. Unless it’s raining sideways or lightning, we don’t have to cancel. But you can come early, you can picnic on the lawn, we have a bar setup, you can get wine, you can bring your own food, get food from food trucks. You can hang out for the 90 minutes before and then you can take your seat, see a great show, the stars come out, the breeze is sort of going - these saddle span tents, they look like upside down Pringle chips, really - and the breeze sort of goes in and out under it. So you get all your truss, so you have all your lighting, all your sound, all the stuff you need, but you still have the wonderful breezes of a summer night and get to be outdoors. It’s just really magical, and I will be very excited to get back to that.
I grew up in Indianapolis in a pretty conservative school and community and I always felt like a little bit of an outsider. And when I went to camp at Interlochen for the first time I felt included with a bunch of misfits, people who were interested in the arts, all of whom have become the most amazing artists in the country now. At the time we were all just big nerds. So, I found a home and I decided to stay there at the academy and follow a pursuit in theater. Ironically being that I am the worst actress in the world.
When I went to camp I was able to find my friend family right away. I felt included, I felt my interest in the arts was not a strange or alien aspect to my personality, but a core reason for being. And I found a group of 400 people who felt the same way.
It got me out of a very conservative, straight-laced environment and allowed me to sort of fly my freak flag a little bit.
I was jealous of her because she was super cool and had a super cool boyfriend. And she was jealous of me because I was super cool and had a super gay boyfriend. And we were sort of satellites circling the same theater group, never really connecting but always sort of… gazing lovingly afar with jealousy.
And then we went to Sarah Lawrence together. And that’s when we became really close personal friends.
When I say I quit acting during Interlochen, what that meant was that I found my love for directing thanks to the program I was in.
I was horrible. I didn’t know how to walk, I didn’t know how to talk. So the program reflected back to me that I was not a good actor and instead guided me toward directing where I thrived
Yeah, New York was where it was at. That’s where all the work was happening.
I came to Sarah Lawrence and thereafter New York where I understood that I could shake the boundaries of what theater is, how it can reach people and how we can enjoy it without it being this pefectly pictorially represented visual thing very very far away from us. Something that was interactive and experiential and impactful.
Erin and I have never not been in touch. She and I have been as close as you can be since the day we met. When I went abroad in college she would send me letters updating me about episodes of Party of FIve and I have them to this day. They are long and they matter. They were important to her and they were important to me. And I would receive them almost weekly. And then at some point it changed to Felicity, I think. So again, we were never not talking. When we were in New York we were living together. She moved back to Michigan. In that timeframe I ended up getting my MFA at Northwestern in Chicago, so I made the leap from New York to Chicago.
How personal do you want it?
I am busy in my directing program. I have a great community there. But I’m totally longing for something I cannot put my finger on. // And I was lonely. // I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was really longing for something that I couldn’t understand.
Erin makes one of her visits. And she’s visiting because she’s in love with someone in Chicago. And she stays with me. And we would plot and plan how, you know, she was going to get this guy. // So we have many many meals together, but one of them is at a Sushi restaurant in Evanston called Koi. And she sits me down and she has this look in her eye. And she asks me what was I thinking about for my next steps in my career. Which felt really official and professional and not us at all. And I thought, you know, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll stay in Chicago, do the storefront scene for a while, maybe I’ll go back to New York and get a fellowship. Maybe I’ll go to Austin or Boulder - one of the larger burgeoning theater areas. And she said what would you think about bringing all of your connections and all of your people to Traverse City to start our own company? And it took me about two seconds to realize that’s what I was looking for. That I wanted to go home.
And I had all of the circles of people I needed to create that company. All I needed was the place.
My one question to Erin was, is there an audience for the kind of work that you and I enjoy. And she said absolutely. And she cited the film festival’s success at that point. She cited all of the non-profit organizations that were starting to build and grow and gain audiences. And she explained to me that the food scene was hopping, and the bar scene was growing and that people were moving there from Brooklyn and Detroit and Cincinnati. And I was in.
I moved back to Michigan and we got started.
So then you decide to launch a company but then you decide to go back to grad school. But not just any grad school, one of the most expensive in the country, maybe the world, I don’t know. So tell me about starting a business // and sort of balancing these things.
Here’s what I knew. I knew I wanted to start a theater company with Erin, and I knew neither one of us knew the business part of starting a company. And I knew I had the time, energy and resources to get that education. So it took me around two seconds to figure out Yale was the place to go. // And by the grace of the universe they accepted me.
And in the meantime, how are you balancing setting up this theater with going to grad school?
I’m exhausted! Talk about the culture of exhaustion. Yale school of theater is the most exhausting place on the planet and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But I was planning the launch of that company while engaged in that program and it was so much fun // and they helped me figure it out.
I spent 7 years building Parallel 45 out of DC where I was one of the lead curators for a presenting organization that presented dance and performance artists.
And finally at one point that came to a beautiful end and I was able to move to Traverse City in 2013.
(Theater had been launched for three years by the