Interview: Gregory Poggi

Gregory Poggi successfully led the Philadelphia Drama Guild throughout the decade of the 1980s. He talked with us about his memories of those days - tussles with board members, battles with critics, fundraising triumphs and the growing audience support for professional nonprofit theater companies in the city.

For a blog post on our website with additional images and information, go to:
https://www.aithpodcast.com/blog/images-for-episode-93-gregory-poggi/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Peter Schmitz
Hello and welcome to Adventures in Theater History, where we bring you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host, Peter Schmitz, and our original theme music is by Christopher Mark Colucci.

Today we share the next installment of the story we began in our last episode - the history of the Philadelphia Drama Guild. Join us as we continue our Season Four: “The Rise of Modern Philadelphia Theater.

[SEASON FOUR THEME]

Gregory Poggi grew up in New York City in the 1950s and 60s, where he fell in love with theater. After attending Iona College, he went on to Indiana University in Bloomington, where he got both his MA and Ph.D.. His decades of leadership in American theater is astoundingly long and distinguished. Greg is a founder of the Indiana Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis, served as managing director of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, and he has led university theater and artistic management programs in Dallas, Texas and Ann Arbor, Michigan.  He is, in fact, the perfect person for us to interview at this point in the overall storyline of our podcast, because - because during the 1980s, he was the head of the Philadelphia Drama Guild. 

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Greg Poggi has not lived in the Philadelphia area for 35 years now, however, and he left long before I arrived on the scene. We, in fact, had never met before, but when I reached out to him via email, he immediately and graciously agreed to be interviewed.

We spoke by telephone early in November of 2024 - which accounts for the particular sound quality of the recording, but really I think the interview turned out quite well - I learned a lot of great detail and stories from him that I could have gotten nowhere else - although I have of course edited the sound file both for time and clarity.

When he picked up the phone, Greg started our conversation with a question for me.

Gregory Poggi Who ARE you?

Peter Schmitz  Which, you know, was not at all an unreasonable thing to ask, really. So I spent about ten minutes talking about myself, the podcast, and of course the book which was about to be released right then and was very much on my mind. So I’m skipping past all of those preliminary minutes, and moving ahead to the moment when I began to ask about his own time spent working in Philadelphia theater. . . . .

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Gregory Poggi Happy to accommodate you. Just shoot away. 

Peter Schmitz  Well, I note that you sort of walk into the scene, as it were, in about the year 1979 when the Drama Guild was already . . . had been established as an institution for about 20 years. 

Gregory Poggi Correct. 

Peter Schmitz It had been a professional company since about 1970. When it became the resident company, so to speak, at the Walnut Street [Theatre], which was a venue and not a producing organization then. 

Gregory Poggi  Correct. Right.

Peter Schmitz And it had been through various leaderships, including Douglas Seale and. . . . 

Gregory Poggi Yeah, I walked into the theater when Douglas Seale was still Artistic Director. 

Peter Schmitz Right now . . . .you came from Canada . .

Gregory Poggi  Yeah, I was at the  . . .  what is now the Royal Manitoba Theatre Center from ‘74 to ‘79 in Winnipeg. 

Peter Schmitz  Well, that's interesting because both Bob Hedley and Bernard Havard are also from that part of the world. 

Gregory Poggi Yes, yes and before that, I am a Founder - a co-founder of the Indiana Repertory Theater in Indianapolis. 

Peter Schmitz Wow! 

Gregory Poggi Which is in it’s . .  oh, its 55th season at this point, right? I went to Graduate School at Indiana University in Bloomington where I got my Masters degree, and then my PhD. And at that time, 50 miles up the road in Indianapolis, they didn't have an Equity professional theater company. So I thought, well, this would be fun to do for a little while. And there we are. 

Peter Schmitz Mm-hm.. 

Gregory Poggi Indiana Repertory Theater still going strong. I got a job at Manitoba, interestingly enough, beating out Bernard Hervard for that job  . . . .

Peter Schmitz  Wow.

Gregory Poggi . . . as Managing Director. You know, I didn't go there to change my nationality. I went there for the work - and I became very anxious to get back to the US. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. 

Gregory Poggi  Seeing as I was from the US - and so the position came up in Philadelphia, and I applied for it, and I got it. And of course, at the time Douglas Seale was the then Artistic Director, starting the season. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. 

Gregory Poggi  I came in August and he was already there and announced his season. So I inherited that season. I also inherited a theater which on the books had an accumulated deficit. Of almost $300,000. 

Peter Schmitz  Wow, and how . .  

Gregory Poggi  And I thought, well, you know, that's manageable. If we work at cleaning things up, I also. . .  

Peter Schmitz  And that was not unheard of for other nonprofit theater companies. I mean, certainly other companies had been known to carry debts forward . . .  

Gregory Poggi Yeah, yeah. 

Peter Schmitz  . . . and sort of manage them through corporate help and grants and so forth. 

Gregory Poggi  The irony of the situation at the time was that the deficit was actually much larger. 

Peter Schmitz  Oh! 

Gregory Poggi   Even though the audited statement listed it at $281,000, it was much, much larger. And my first few months was dealing with the Board of Directors of the Drama Guild whose chairman put his head in the sand on the issue. And so I had to go around the board and interview them and find anybody who had the brains and the brawn and the ability to tackle this deficit. The person I found who was going to do that happened to be the President at the time of what was known as the Philadelphia National Bank - PNB -his name was Fred Heldring. Frederick Heldring. And I walked into his office and I said if we don't clean this mess up, we'll be bankrupt in two weeks. That got his attention. 

Peter Schmitz  But why would that . . .  why didn't he just say: “Oh, well, bye!” 

Gregory Poggi  He was the president of one of the two major banks in the city and the Drama Guild owed that bank an $80,000 loan. 

Peter Schmitz I see. 

Gregory Poggi So not only would he be sitting on the board of a bankrupt organization, but he would be dealing with the fact that his bank was not going to get that $80,000 back. 

Peter Schmitz  Wow, so you were able to leverage the fact that, in some way, a debtor has a little power over the person who they owe money to. 

Gregory Poggi Correct! He went into his act. And he commandeered some members of the board, including the late Goldman Sachs partner in Philadelphia, George Ross. And he basically. . . . he and Ross just tackled the thing head on. And as the months progressed, we whittled away at it -  until by April of 1980, the deficit was down to less than $10,000. 

Peter Schmitz So what was the main tactic that you guys were able to do? Was it . . .  

Gregory Poggi  Aggressive, aggressive fundraising.  . .  

Peter Schmitz  I see. 

Gregory Poggi   . . .and the fact that the board at the time was outdoing itself to show that they were heroic members of the board. We had one board meeting where one director got up. And we were looking to get more cash flow going and he got up and he shamed the rest of the board by saying, all right, I'm good for $10,000. Nobody expected this from this man. And the rest of the board kind of paid attention and they all started slipping more money into the till. Of course they didn't want to be upped by this board member, who they didn't think had that kind of resource. 

Peter Schmitz   I see. 

Gregory Poggi  Remember this in 1980. 

Peter Schmitz  Before the Reagan tax cut. Yeah. 

Gregory Poggi  So this is quite a lot of money. Yeah. At the same time, we were looking for a new artistic director. Douglas Seale’s contract was not renewed. He thought he was going to go to Broadway by taking a show by an English playwright called Phark - PHARK. 

Peter Schmitz  Yes, I just saw that in the newspaper archives. 

Gregory Poggi Yeah, and it was. You know, kind of an eccentric English comedy with not much of an American following. But he thought this was going to be his ticket to Broadway, and it wasn't, of course. 

Peter Schmitz  Hmm. 

Gregory Poggi  Anyway, his contract was not renewed. We were also looking for a new artistic director. And at the time, we found a woman by the name of Irene Lewis.

Peter Schmitz  Yes!

Gregory Poggi   . . who was at the Hartford Stage Company as the Associate Artistic Director, Hartford, CT - and Irene decided to take the job! It was offered to her,  she took the job and we started the new season in the fall of 1980. She did a brilliant production of Watch on the Rhine. A wonderful play that she had directed once before. It was terrific, she turned out  . . it turned out rather well. We had a theater critic at the time. We had two major newspapers. One was the Inquirer, the other was the Bulletin - the afternoon paper. The theatre critics had a rivalry. And so Bill Collins wrote for the Inquirer and Ernie Scheier wrote for the Bulletin. And they were always trying to outdo each other. Anyway, the season continued.  . . We did a five-play Season - five productions - and we had to leave the Walnut Street Theatre in addition to everything else. They kicked us out because back then . . .  one of the major board members of the Walnut Street Theater - so, he wanted to be an artistic director and producer. So he kicked those out. They kicked us out. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. 

Gregory Poggi  We weren't the best of tenants to begin with. Let me tell you that. 

Peter Schmitz  Well, I can see in the records there'd been some. . . there were some complaints on their side. That they . . .

Gregory Poggi  Yes. And the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania gave us a home and gave us two weeks. They picked the date every two weeks. I mean, not every, but five times a year they gave us two weeks. This was at 36th and Walnut, and the Walnut Street Theater was at 9th and Walnut and people didn't want to go to that neighborhood and the Annenberg Center was in West Philadelphia. 

Peter Schmitz  Yes, it was a different part of town and it was a different kind of theater. It was a modern theater instead of the old-fashioned proscenium arch like the Walnut. 

Gregory Poggi  Right. And Irene adapted to that space. And then from her first production. Things started to go a little bit South. She became very unhappy until she finally directed . .  The fourth production of the season was The Front Page. 

Peter Schmitz  Right - classic Ben Hecht comedy. 

Gregory Poggi  Big cast show - mostly men of course. And the then-theater critic William B. Collins of the Inquirer basically gave it a totally negative review and just harped on it in his Monday column as well. And he harped on her. I don't know what his problem was. Maybe because she was a woman, perhaps. In any case, he was just after her, and she became very upset about all that. Her work was not being appreciated. The fifth show of the season was a two-hander. Which was a very lovely production. She didn't direct it, and it didn't do very well. In addition to raising money to retire the deficit. We had to contend with selling season tickets for the next season at the same time that Irene was having qualms about whether she should stay or not. And she finally decided to resign in the summer of 1980. [NB: it was actually 1981]. 

Peter Schmitz  Yeah, yeah. And she ends up in Baltimore, right? She ends up in  . .. 

Gregory Poggi   Eventually, she went there. She was friends with the then-artistic director, but she left Philadelphia. Didn't want anything to do with the place. She was very unhappy. And I was stuck with another situation to deal with there. No artistic director. And so I picked the season - started off, and it . . . the season ended up doing very well, including one of the shows was a new play, an English play by Dennis Cannan and called Dear Daddy, which got great reviews. It was the second show of that particular season. And it included [sic] a rave review in Time magazine.

Peter Schmitz   Wow

Gregory Poggi  It was directed by a man named William Woodward. He was the former artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. And we got along famously. And so I used him twice. I was still “Managing Director.” We had no Artistic Director. I did that for several years as Managing Director. The board didn't think they needed to hire anybody else. And they didn't want to give me the title, which I asked them to give me, which was “Producing Managing Director” or “Producing Artistic Director” as opposed to just managing director 'cause I was selecting the plays and the directors and so forth. We did that for several years, and the theater survived quite happily. 

Peter Schmitz  Yes, I noticed that, interestingly, throughout your tenure, the Drama Guild seems to have been in the black! Which was . . .

Gregory Poggi  Yes!

Peter Schmitz  What was your secret sauce? To what do you attribute that fiscal success? 

Gregory Poggi  Raising money, going around the community, putting together a sensible budget so that you would have the dollars from the ticket sales. Were about  . . . I can't remember the exact number, but we would raise 35% of the budget from contributions and grants. And one of the saviors of the Drama Guild was the Glenmede Trust Company. They had a foundation. And they gave us a challenge grant. So for every dollar we raised, they would give us $2.00 and we were aggressive fundraisers to get that challenge grant. 

Peter Schmitz  Well, it's amazing how much you were able to get the business community and the charitable community to rally around this institution. What would you say was the feeling amongst the, sort of, executive class . . the sort of people that would be on boards . .  about Philadelphia theatre? The “tryout town era” was ending. Was there a feeling that Philadelphia wouldn't matter as a city, as a locale, if it didn't have a major theater institution like other major cities? Or was it competition amongst each other? Like, “we want to beat the people that are on the Orchestra board or the [Art] Museum board”? 

Gregory Poggi  Yes, it was a feeling that the commercial tryout situation had changed significantly in Philadelphia. It wasn't like it used to be, and there was a need for regular theater going in the city and suburbs and we filled that need. And we strengthened the Board of Directors and put things back together again. And then did sensible good seasons with inspiring shows. Not every one show was a huge success, but we put together a substantial season that the public appreciated.

Peter Schmitz  Yes, I'm looking here at an article dated July 14th, 1981, and it mentions that you scheduled Dear Daddy by Dennis Cannan and then you would do Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Then’d be Albert Innaurato’s Gemini. And then the Goldoni farce Servant of Two Masters. And ending with a revival of Paul Osborne's Oliver, Oliver.

Gregory Poggi  Right!

Peter Schmitz  And so some of those are warhorses, and some of those are sort of . .  Gemini would be a Philly favorite. It’s set in Philadelphia, it has, you know, the South .  . 

Gregory Poggi  Albert Innaurato came to town. He was from Philadelphia. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. 

Gregory Poggi  That work had never been produced in his native city. 

Peter Schmitz  Right, right. It had run for like five years on Broadway. But it hasn't been done in Philadelphia. 

Gregory Poggi  Off-Broadway. 

Peter Schmitz  Yeah.

Gregory Poggi  And Oliver, Oliver was directed by the man who did Mornings at Seven on Broadway.

Peter Schmitz  Vivian Matalon.

Gregory Poggi  Matalon! Vivian Matalon. He directed, but he had a big success with Mornings at Seven, and we had a wonderful cast, including Nancy Marchand in that production. 

Peter Schmitz  Wow. 

Gregory Poggi  Which people had hoped might transfer to New York. It didn't, but it was a wonderful production. 

Peter Schmitz  Right, well, that was.  . . . That was often the hope in those days that a nonprofit theater would happen upon some production that would have legs, that could then transfer  . .

Gregory Poggi  Right.

Peter Schmitz  . . .  and add an additional revenue stream back to the original theater. Getting commercial money. Did that ever happen, the whole time during your tenure?. 

Gregory Poggi  Not really, no. It didn't happen in Philadelphia anyway, for the Drama Guild. No, not at all. 

Peter Schmitz  You know, I was myself was being interviewed by a graduate student - I think at Drexel -  who was writing about. Shows that transferred to commercial venues from nonprofit theaters, and I said I couldn't really think of anything from Philadelphia that went on to New York. Doesn't seem to. I mean, there were certainly attempts to and I think the Walnut has tried to several times. But it's never really happened. 

Gregory Poggi   Right. The Walnut when it. . . .  Basically, we lost our lease at the Walnut and they started to produce on their own the first couple of years.. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. By 1983 they . . .  Bernard then was hired to become a Producing Artistic Director at the Walnut. So you now had competition, as it were, in your old space. And at the same time, the Philadelphia company had gone Equity and was now producing plays at the Plays and Players Theater. 

Gregory Poggi  Right.

Peter Schmitz  And the the Wilma Theater, a former sort of theater collective,  the Zizkas, had taken that over, and they had now gotten . . .  had built their own place over on Sansom St. 

Gregory Poggi Right. 

Peter Schmitz  There begins to be a number of other nonprofit companies regularly producing a mixture of new and classic play for the Philadelphia audience. Was it your experience that this competition - were people . .  were companies cannibalizing each other's audiences, or was it growing the audience to have all these organizations? 

Gregory Poggi  I'd say, I'd say growing. No, the Wilma Theater started out very, very small  in the tiny space on Sansom St. And the Philadelphia Company started out small as well. Actually, they all kind of reinforced each other and appreciation of indigenous American theater being produced in Philadelphia wasn't. . .  a theater that was simply assuming shows from elsewhere that will move on to Broadway or some of that sort, yeah. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. I know that you tried during your tenure, you  tried to start something called POP or P.O.P. - “Plays of Philadelphia.”
 
Gregory Poggi  “Playwrights of Philadelphia”

Peter Schmitz  “Playwrights,” excuse me . .  where you were trying to support local playwriting talent. 

Gregory Poggi  Playwrights of Philadelphia. It was an attempt to get, you know, to find and nurture. Native talent in playwright that lasted a couple of years. It was not. . . . You know, it was in many ways an experimental program, and it was intended to. Encourage indigenous writers, and it was not terribly well received by the media. They would look at it and think, “well, this work has to be as finished as it could be.” No! Is this a play in progress! We're working here. And it lasted a few years. 

Peter Schmitz  Do you think that was the old tryout town mindset that they were used to seeing shows that were on their way to New York and the Philly will make or break these.

Gregory Poggi  Yes.

Peter Schmitz  And yeah, I've seen that mentioned several places that the transition from the Tryout Town mindset to. 

Gregory Poggi  Sure.
 
Peter Schmitz  Supporting an indigenous company was certainly a problem for the Theater of the Living Arts. One of the reasons why it didn't end up catching fire, and certainly one that, like the Philadelphia Company, struggled with because I noticed during the 1980s they nearly crashed and burned. I know Sarah Garonzik had to stop producing for a while.

Gregory Poggi  Exactly.

Peter Schmitz  And it looked like  . . what else? I can understand the POP was struggling. Although you had good relationships with funders, it was hard to get a consistent funding for that program because. By the mid and late 1980s, because of government cuts to the arts, we're now in the midst of the Reagan administration. They were cutting social services. Were decreasing, you know regular raises in the National Endowment for the Arts.. Charitable foundations were now feeling like they needed to go fill those gaps. Yes, and supporting a a playwright wasn't at the top of their ideological To Do List.

Gregory Poggi
 That's correct.

Peter Schmitz  But still, you know you continued for an 11 year tenure and you were always a Managing Director. 

Gregory Poggi  That's correct. I I was. 

Peter Schmitz  Did they ever give you the “Producing Managing Director” title, I hope? 

Gregory Poggi  Yeah, they finally gave it to me. But by the end of the 1980s. Please, I was getting pretty tired trying to find material that would work on the Annenberg stage. It was a big theater. 

Peter Schmitz  Yes, Mary told me it was very wide and that it was hard to . . . 

Gregory Poggi  Yes. 

Peter Schmitz   . . it didn't compress well the the edge of the energy went out the edges, she said. 

Gregory Poggi  Yes. And I was getting very tired of all of that. And I thought, all right, I  put in my 9th year. All right, I'll give it another year. By the 11th year, I said,” this is I. I've got to, you know, I should move on.”

Peter Schmitz   . . With the Annenberg but your offices were elsewhere, right? They weren't on Arch . . .  

Gregory Poggi  Yeah. I  think we're 15th St. opposite one of the big social clubs in the city. I used to wave to the people as they were having lunch. And then we still had many of the same board members who had been with the theater when it was in the early troubles it had back in the 1980-81 period. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. 

Gregory Poggi  And then the then chairman of the board who had been chairman for many years, George Ross. He's now deceased. He basically didn't want to renew my contract. You know,  he wanted . . , he thought. “We could do better. We can do better.” So they didn't renew my contract, which I was eternally grateful under my breath.

Peter Schmitz  You already sort of had developed relationships at Southern Memphis University in Texas, is that right? 

Gregory Poggi  Yes, yes, in Dallas. And I decided that I would move to Dallas and take that position permanently. It was a graduate program in which I would be the director of a program where the students got two degrees - an MBA from the Business School at SMU, and an MA in Arts Administration from the Arts School.  A two-year program. When they were finished, I would put them in a permanent internship for the whole summer, that often would lead to them getting a job with that arts organization somewhere around the country. And I was very happy doing that work. At the same time I was doing that work, they tapped me to become the Consulting Artistic Director. Of the Dallas Theater Center. Because their artistic director, a young man, a very talented guy, who was just appointed, died in a freak accident 

Peter Schmitz  Oh! 

Gregory Poggi   . . on the first play of the season that he was artistic director. He was 35 years old and he was in an ambulance 'cause. He was in a minor crash, an automobile crash on his way to work. And the medic gave him the wrong medication and died as a result of that. 

Peter Schmitz  Oh no! 

Gregory Poggi  And so they turned to me to be a consultant, which I did while they looked for a permanent artistic director. I didn't want the job. I was managing my program, and I did two jobs for 14 months. While they look for a permanent artistic director. Enough already!.
 
Peter Schmitz   But yeah, well, I see that you. You know . . It was established by 1989 that you were going to be moving on and they were looking for the new Artistic Director and eventually they found Mary Robinson  . . 

Gregory Poggi  Correct.

Peter Schmitz   . . and we've covered that in an earlier interview with her and all her years there. One thing that I noticed was that as you were leaving town, as it were, there was an article in the paper from. Your former nemesis William B. Collins. Saying, “Hey, Mr. Poggi has done a wonderful job and I've been very rough on him over the years, but he's never been less than wonderful to me and I as a theater critic, I want to say that now.” So I hope that, at least, felt a little satisfying. 

Gregory Poggi  It did. Well, you know what I would do is - I would take him out to lunch once or twice a year to his favorite restaurant and we would just talk about theater. He wasn't critical of me personally, and while we were having lunch, we talked about non-profit theater theater, commercial theater . . . 'Cause he would review, as you well know, both of them. And we would just have a civilized conversation and nothing, even though he would pan a show, I didn't bring it up. I just let it go. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. OK. Well, and by that time, the Bulletin had gone out of business. So the Inquirer was the only real, the real, the big dog in town. 

Gregory Poggi  Yes. 

Peter Schmitz  You know, tt was, yeah, important to . . . There were alternative papers. But I don't think they really mattered for your audience. 

Gregory Poggi  Yeah, that's right. It became THE paper in the city. 

Peter Schmitz  I keep trying to convince my current students . .  I teach now at Temple . . . I keep trying to tell the students how powerful theater critics used to be, and they don't believe me. 

Gregory Poggi  In the old days they could make or break a show before it could get to New York, to get to Broadway. That's what happened

Peter Schmitz  Yeah. That was the reason to be a Philly theater critic during the Tryout Town Era. Yeah. 

Gregory Poggi  Yeah. That was amazing. 

Peter Schmitz  Yeah. Now, by the late 1980s, when the tryout market is gone. And it's mostly these smaller nonprofit theaters. Did you, as a person who was administering front of this company, feel that? The critical standards were not adjusting to the reality of the new situation that we're trying to serve the community and you're holding us to some standard, as if we're all doing Broadway tryouts all the time! 

Gregory Poggi  Well, I think that was part of.  . . Yeah. The the sensibility on the part of those critics was very much influenced because it was Philadelphia. Close to New York City. 

Peter Schmitz  Mm. 

Gregory Poggi  It was very much influenced by that commercial theater scene. 

Peter Schmitz  Yeah, and they would commonly.  . . . I see that and at the time they would commonly be sent to New York and they would review Broadway plays and Off Broadway plays as well. 

Gregory Poggi  Right. 

Peter Schmitz  So that was all part of their milieu. 

Gregory Poggi Correct.

Peter Schmitz  So the actors you were bringing in and the directors you were bringing in that you never had a resident company the whole time you were there. 

Gregory Poggi   No, it didn't make sense economically because of the schedule that we had. That the Annenberg Center gave us was too erratic. I've managed to get the situation where we would go to a three-week run for each production, but it had to be at a date that the Annenberg Center said: “you have to take those dates whether you like it or not.” So I didn't have the benefit of continuity during the course of the season. I had to just do five productions. Given these five dates, we would cast it in New York. We would always go. We would sometimes use local actors. 

Peter Schmitz  You did hold local auditions for local Equity artists.

Gregory Poggi  Yes, we did and we used some of them, no doubt about that. But we used a lot of guest directors who were very much partial. To auditioning in New York City. 

Peter Schmitz   But there must have been some. . . .  It certainly occurred to you, and certainly among the Board, that if this was the standing problem, that you didn't own  . . . you didn't control the venue and you had to first deal with the Walnut’s issues and with the Annenberg’s issues. Was there a push at some point and we need to get our own stage. We need to have our own place. 

Gregory Poggi   Please! Don't get me into THAT! 

Peter Schmitz  Well, I'm here to get you into that! 

Gregory Poggi   I tried three times over the course of my tenure in Philadelphia at the Drama Guild. Three times to push the Board to go out and develop a fundraising initiative for our own home. Our own theater facilities. And three times I was defeated by the Board, who felt, “oh, well, look, we're doing OK at the Annenberg Center. Why should we go out and raise millions of dollars? We don't need to do that.” The then board chair got,  you know, fed up with me pushing and pushing. So that's one of the reasons, you know, they wanted new leadership. They didn't want anybody pushing them to get a new facility now. Mary Robinson had troubles, as you probably know, dealing with that facility at the Annenberg Center, and she wanted to do work in other sized venues locally in Philadelphia. No, just didn't want to use that. Annenberg Center all the time. Remember, the Annenberg Center had . . 

Peter Schmitz   Yeah, she told me she used the MTI Theatre, a new space in a converted church nearby - but that the audience then sort of rebelled and said no, we want right to go to our same seat. 

Gregory Poggi  Right. Right. 

Peter Schmitz   There was a very conservative sort of feeling amongst Philadelphia audiences like “this is just a social thing that we do and we want it to be the same every year and don't put us Into new spaces and don't make us find new parking places.” 

Gregory Poggi  Right. That was it. That was it. The audience was very conservative about their feelings about the space, the . . and the Annenberg space was just, you know, finding the right material for it.  . .  Anyway, under my watch - five times a year - to make it work in that space was very very difficult. 

Peter Schmitz  But so you moved on and Mary took over. And it, . . .  but then you were, you've subsequently been at both SMU and then at University of Michigan. . . .  I mean I would love to cover that, but it's not really the province of our podcast, but it. You must have looked back after you left Philadelphia and saw, you know, the events that transpired in the next few years with the Drama Guild suddenly cratering, the audience cratering under Mary - for various reasons which we covered with her. And then the Walnut Street [Theatre] where you had originally been - suddenly started eating the Drama Guild’s lunch, as it were, sort of taking that subscription audience. And they went full bore into that “build your subscription audience mode,” you know, “Subscribe Now!” And they developed this huge subscription base . . . 

Gregory Poggi Yes they did. Yes. 

Peter Schmitz  And so we're looking back on what as you then look back and from afar, what thoughts did you have watching these events transpire back in Philly? 

Gregory Poggi  Well, you must remember the Walnut Street Theater was in a wonderful location there in the city itself, surrounded by all these great restaurants and nightlife and such. So they had a built-in opportunity to build an audience there with the right management. Which they ended up having. You could argue that their programming was very lightweight. You could argue that their programming was not terribly adventuresome. 

Peter Schmitz   Well - “Vox Populi,” Bernard would say, no doubt - “The Voice of the People!” 

Gregory Poggi Yes. 

Peter Schmitz  He would. . . he's said that to me several times and that, and he said . . .  “I've got 1200 seats to fill and I need to find you know that number of people to get in here eight times a week or at least something approaching that.” 

Gregory Poggi  Correct. And remember that when I first took over at the Drama Guild and we moved to the Annenberg Center in the first year, we were getting a substantial amount of money from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Peter Schmitz  Right. 

Gregory Poggi And that money kept decreasing as the years progressed, till it was practically down to less than $10,000 a year. 

Peter Schmitz  Wow. 

Gregory Poggi  I mean. . .  So the Walnut Street Theater was funded by the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. They had a strong relationship with the Haas family and their foundation, yeah. 

Gregory Poggi  Correct. And the foundation would not let that theater down. At all. It would subsidize it enormously because it was to its advantage to keep that facility in tip top shape. Which they did. 

Peter Schmitz   So, and the Drama Guild - although it had acquired a lot of sort of popular cachet during the 70s and 80s - began to lose that to the Walnut. 

Gregory Poggi  Yeah, yeah. We lost it. We lost it to the Walnut. Yes. That's correct. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. But then these other theater companies, the Wilma and the Philadelphia Theatre Company and eventually the Arden which sort of started upstairs at the Walnut in a tiny space. Do you . . .You previously said that it wasn't just cannibalizing one audience to save the other that the audience was growing . .  did  . .  Was there a sense that the support for nonprofit theater and theater that was taking place in the city was growing throughout the 80s? Was that an exciting feeling? Or was it just, . . ? 

Gregory Poggi  Yes. It was growing. There was no doubt about that. 

Peter Schmitz  OK. 

Gregory Poggi   When I left the Walnut . .  pardon me, when I left the Annenberg Center, we left it with 18,000 season ticket holders and a $100,000 fund surplus. 

Peter Schmitz   Man! 

Gregory Poggi  And you know the rest - what happened after that. 

Peter Schmitz  Yes. Well, you've had a continuing presence in American nonprofit theater. Woud you ever come back to work in the Philadelphia area again in any capacity? 

Gregory Poggi  I don't know. Like, gee, I went to the University of Michigan because I was offered a position there as chair of the Theater Department, and I knew some of the people there from. Having worked with them in the field as actors and directors - and so it was very appealing to go there because it is a wonderful university, as you well know, and the theater program was very vital. 

Peter Schmitz   Of course, yeah. 

Gregory Poggi   And the theater program was very vital, so I went there and I spent 15 years there. Or was it 16? I can't remember which then I. Well, maybe it's time to go to a place where there isn't so much snow. It. It was 93 inches of snow that winter. 

Peter Schmitz   Right. I think a lot of Michiganders come to that decision, you know: 

Gregory Poggi   “I don't know if I can handle more of that.”  And so we decided that  . . . my wife is originally from Dallas, TX. She grew up here. So we decided that we would come back here. And interestingly enough, when I came back here, SMU offered me a position again for another year. During COVID - so we had to do that kind of long distance, as it were, from home. 

Peter Schmitz   Well, Greg, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm so glad that we got in touch with each other, and you've been so generous with your memories and with your time. Don't want to take up too much more of it. Was there anything that you think we didn't cover about your years at the Drama Guild? 

Gregory Poggi  Well, gee, I don't know! But if there's anything you think that needs further discussion, don't hesitate to give me a call. 

Peter Schmitz  OK. Thank you. That’s very generous. 

Gregory Poggi   I'd be very happy to speak with you again if there's any gaps or other explanations you may need. 

Peter Schmitz  All right. 

Gregory Poggi  I'd be happy to visit with you again. And your book is out when? What's it called? 

Peter Schmitz  On November 30th, it's called Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia. 

Gregory Poggi   And it’s . . . OK - by you. 

Peter Schmitz   Yeah, by me, Peter Schmitz. And it’s on Amazon if you look for it. 

Gregory Poggi  Ok, I will check it out! 

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Peter Schmitz

Well let’s all of us thank Gregory Poggi once again for sharing his memories and insights with us - and I certainly appreciate that he managed to bring up my book at the end there - which gives me the occasion to remind you all once again that it is now available for ordering! Go right to your own local independent bookstore and ask for it. 

But you can also find it through all the well-known online booksellers, as well as on the website of the publisher, Brookline Books in Havertown, Pennsylvania

Of course, you could do what my cousin mistakenly did and contact the lovely small independent bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts and get them to mail it to you. But it was kind of a long way for them to send it, because she lives in Portland Oregon. But you know, it was all fine! It got to her in the end, and she tells me she’s enjoying it all the more because now it has a great little story to go along with it. That’s what I really love about owning actual physical books - the object itself becomes  part of your life story, and carries its own history and associations. 

Of course if you’d like to order the e-book for your Kindle device, that’s great too. We welcome you all. And if you’re in the Philly area, keep an eye out on social media for announcements about author events or book signings or interviews I might be doing over the next few months - the podcast is now on Bluesky and Mastodon and YouTube! As well as (for the moment, anyway) Facebook and Instagram and Threads.

We’ll be back with another podcast in a couple weeks - I think next I will re-release the interview I did with Mary Robinson back in May of 2022, in order to complete the story of the Philadelphia Drama Guild. Thank you for listening today, and for coming along on another Adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia.

[AITH END THEME]