Company Secrets with Stephen Mills: Directing Ballet Austin

In this episode of Company Secrets, Jared sits down with Stephen Mills, Artistic Director of Ballet Austin, as he celebrates his 25th season leading the company. Stephen reflects on his unexpected path from late-blooming dancer to visionary director, sharing insights on curating repertoire, cultivating company culture, and balancing tradition with bold innovation.

He pulls back the curtain on Ballet Austin’s audition and hiring process, the realities of dancer contracts, and the shift toward more equitable and collaborative company practices. Stephen also opens up about his philosophy of leadership, the importance of curiosity in artistry, and why mentoring and supporting dancers, both onstage and as people, is at the heart of his work.

From building audiences in Austin’s rapidly growing arts scene to creating landmark works like Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project, Stephen offers a candid look at the challenges and rewards of directing a major American ballet company.

Whether you’re an aspiring dancer, a seasoned professional, or simply curious about the inner workings of ballet, this conversation is filled with wisdom, perspective, and inspiration.

Show notes: 

Company Website: https://balletaustin.org/

Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project- https://youtu.be/IqVk0YEFuqM

Transcript

Jared Redick (00:05)
Welcome to Company Secrets, the podcast where we pull back the curtain on the professional dance world. Each week, I sit down with artistic directors and industry leaders to have candid conversations about how dance companies really work, what they're looking for, how decisions get made, and what it takes to thrive. I'm your host, Jared Redick.

My guest today is Stephen Mills, Artistic Director of Ballet Austin, who is celebrating his 25th season leading the company. Since stepping into the role in 2000, Stephen has shaped Ballet Austin into a nationally recognized company known for bold programming, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to accessibility. As a choreographer, Stephen has created more than 60 world premieres for Ballet Austin, with works performed by companies across the US and abroad.

Under his leadership, Ballet Austin has appeared at the Kennedy Center, the Joyce and toured extensively, including a 16 city tour of China. His acclaimed Light, the Holocaust and Humanity Project has been performed internationally and is the subject of the award winning documentary Finding Light. Before directing, Steven had a full performing career dancing principal roles in Balanchine Ballets and works by choreographers like Ohad Naharan, Chusang Go,

and Vincent Nabrata. His experience as both a dancer and creator shapes how he builds company culture, develops artists, and curates a forward-thinking vision. It's a real privilege to hear how he approaches leadership, supporting dancers, shaping careers, and leading Ballet Austin through nearly 25 years of growth and change. Welcome to the show, Stephen.

Stephen Mills (01:53)
Well, thank you, Jared. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Jared Redick (01:56)
I'm so looking forward to our conversation and hearing all the things you've done over the last, or some of the things you've done over the last 25 years. I think our listeners would love to know what a typical day looks like for you as an artistic director.

Stephen Mills (02:10)
think that my schedule for the most part follows the life of a dancer. You know, I arrive at the studio and I teach the company class twice a week. I also teach our Butler Fellowship program one time a week. So I'm pretty active as a teacher. Obviously, I'm involved in a lot of the staging and the rehearsal process in the studio for the ballets that we're working on. You know, my day might include welcoming a visiting choreographer or their stager.

into the studio, helping them as they work through their processes. And then of course, there are other aspects to the job, which includes not only mentoring dancers and choreographers, but also budgeting and schedules and all those sort of mundane things that have to be done in order to keep a company moving forward.

Jared Redick (03:03)
It's never a dull moment when you're an artistic director.

Stephen Mills (03:06)
It just never ends.

Jared Redick (03:07)
Yeah, absolutely. And before we got on, were talking about you have a little bit of downtime. It's great to hear that you do have some downtime once in a while.

Stephen Mills (03:15)
It's really great, but you know, the role of a ballet company is just like any business and there may be slower times, but the business always has to move forward because we're preparing for the season coming up. The dancers arrived back here about the middle of August, but we're also preparing for the season, which follows. It's always ongoing. Fundraising never stops. It is laborious for sure, but certainly a pleasure when you get to the end result.

Jared Redick (03:43)
One of my former artistic directors, Edward Vallella, he always said, you know, we're in the business of art. And as a dancer, that was kind of eye opening to me. I didn't really think of being in a ballet company as the business of anything, but the underlying principles and foundational work that undergird the company, they have to be there and present and strong.

Stephen Mills (04:04)
I think that in one's capacity as a dancer, the focus should be on your personal work and your progress, getting a product onto the stage and making it enjoyable for an audience. But I always wanted to ensure that the dancers understand that that is one aspect of everything we do. There's a huge team that goes along in support of all of that. without one aspect of the team, the whole thing falls apart.

We are all working in support of each other and that is the business of dance.

Jared Redick (04:38)
I think as a dancer, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there is that large team because they are invisible to us to a degree because our life is in the studio when we're dancing, of course.

Stephen Mills (04:49)
You don't know what you don't know. I always make sure that because, you know, the praise goes to everyone. I always like everyone to know. We do a huge introduction at the beginning of the season to introduce the administrative staff to the artistic staff. Sometimes there's a lot of turnover, so there are a lot of introductions to be done, sometimes not, but also to inform everyone of their role in this business.

Jared Redick (05:12)
I'd love for you to speak a little bit about how you approach curating a season. What does that look like? I'm sure you have plans a couple years out, but I'd love it if you could share that for our listeners.

Stephen Mills (05:24)
Well, mean, curating is very interesting because, you know, when I first became artistic director 25 years ago, I was under the mistaken premise that I had control of everything and that whatever I wanted, I could do. And obviously that is incorrect. You work in the community and I think to be successful, you have to understand the community. And I love my community here in Austin, though I wasn't born here.

I really am an Austinite and really do sort of subscribe to our motto here that everything's weird in Austin. so understanding that the success of the business relies upon balance. So I try to take a balanced approach to curation. So we do a lot of full-length work actually. Some of it, you know, in the large Russian classical style with Swan Lake or Giselle or Sleeping Beauty.

Over the course of my time here, I've made many full length ballets, most recently a work called Poe, A Tale of Madness, which follows the story of Edgar Allan Poe. And I think those ballets are important because as humans, we are definitely drawn to storytelling. And as a dance maker, I think it's important to continue to reevaluate those large full length works and to

contribute in a relevant way to the extension of that part of our practice. We do those large works. We also done over my time here a lot of balancing work. We have done work by Christopher Wheldon and Justin Peck and Pam Tanowitz and a lot of commissioning. know, everything from very classical work to very contemporary work. And I think that

I always try to do full length work in order to financially support the work that might be less known or less supported. It's all balance.

Jared Redick (07:23)
The community of Austin, do you find that they're very receptive to the more contemporary works? Maybe some of these retellings of stories or maybe just new stories?

Stephen Mills (07:32)
You know our audience, and again, you brought up the 25th anniversary and I'm always reflecting about where we were and where we are. Austin was much smaller when I first came here as a dancer in 1986. And in the year 2000 when I became artistic director, it had grown a lot. Michael Dell had invented that little thing like a personal computer here in Austin. And so that part of the boom of our economy began then. Austin has grown as a city.

Ballet Austin has grown because of the growth of the city. Art doesn't exist without money, and now there's a little more money in Austin to go around, so that is helpful. I don't like to think of curation as teaching, but I always have thought about a strategy to move the audience towards a greater understanding of different works. When I first came and doing a Balanchine Ballet was sort of a radical thing here.

which, obviously it is not. But if we do this balancing work, how might the audience be receptive to something a little more challenging? And then we bring that into the repertoire and how can we move them to something that is more, well, I mean, just challenging in so many ways. You know, over the course of time, Austin has grown, obviously, because people have moved here. I don't know many people who were actually born in Austin. And so with that migration of people to the city,

They also come with their expectations around what a ballet company might be. And I think that that has been a challenge, not a bad challenge. It's a challenge in the sense that, let's see what we can do. I mean, if these people are here with these sort of experiences, what might we throw at them that they would find interesting? And so we've been on a journey to grow our repertory audience. Our full length work audience is strong and vibrant. And the other part of our audience is growing as well. So we're pleased.

We have done record ticket sales this past season, so we're excited.

Jared Redick (09:33)
Congratulations on all that. That is a lot of work. You're cultivating your audience. You're trying to educate them. You're trying to bring works that are interesting to the community and that really resonate with them and hopefully reflect the values of the community to some degree.

Stephen Mills (09:49)
think so. know, Austin in this state is very red. Austin is this little blue dot in the center of the whole thing. And so I think the audience is welcoming of progressive ideas and not just welcoming of it, sort of in some ways demanding of it, which I find very exciting.

Jared Redick (10:09)
It's great to hear how the city and the taste have evolved and they're supporting your vision and the company as well. Let's move on to the nuts and bolts of what this podcast is really about. It's trying to pull back the curtain on the audition and hiring process and the inner workings of the company to a degree. I would love to know how many dancers are currently in your company.

Stephen Mills (10:31)
The company is not 24 dancers.

Jared Redick (10:33)
Okay, and does that include apprentices or do you have additional apprentices on camera?

Stephen Mills (10:37)
We don't have apprentices. We have a second company, Bally Austin II, which sort of supplement things like the Nutcracker and like if we were to do Swan Lake, this sort of works. And then we have what we call the Butler Fellowship Program, which is a fully funded program for aspirants to a professional career. they're high school up to about 21 years of age. It's completely tuition free.

and it's a day program from nine o'clock till about three in the afternoon.

Jared Redick (11:08)
And so for your main company dancers, how many weeks of work do they have in their contracts?

Stephen Mills (11:13)
34 weeks and we are currently working on our first collective bargaining agreement with AGMA. So that's a very exciting progress.

Jared Redick (11:23)
You just joined Agma is what you're saying, is that correct? Yes. Yeah, I've been in both Agma and non-Agma companies and you know, they both have pros and cons, but I know that my time with Agma companies, you do have different protections, you do have different ways of looking at your job and all the policies and procedures that happen within your daily life as a dancer. That sounds like a great evolution for the company.

Stephen Mills (11:46)
Yes, and so we're all, sort of, it's our first agreement and so we're all sort of working our way through to the understanding of the agreement. But the most important thing is that it's an additional step upward for our organization.

Jared Redick (11:59)
Obviously we always wanna evolve and move forward in all the things that we're doing and always so hard for non-profits and ballet companies to do so effectively and successfully I should say as well. So for those dancers in the company, what is a starting weekly salary or monthly salary for a new dancer for you?

Stephen Mills (12:19)
Well, I mean, as I say, we're in the middle of this negotiating process. So that is varying right now. I think the beginning part of the contract might be $800 a week. But again, we're in the middle of our bargaining agreement, and that will change.

Jared Redick (12:34)
Of course, for the company how many performances do they generally do per season?

Stephen Mills (12:39)
Generally

they do about 40 performances. We do five, a five performance series in a season that includes about 15 Nutcracker performances. We generally begin at the end of September and the middle of May.

Jared Redick (12:54)
That's great. The next question is one that I get asked all the time from my students and dancers I've worked with. When dancers send their audition materials to you, what is your process there? Who sees it? When do they see it? When does it come to your desk? Because ultimately you're the person who's going to make the hire or not.

Stephen Mills (13:14)
The audition process has been evolving ever since the shutdown during COVID. And since we've come back after that, we have not held a nationwide audition process. So what happens generally is that people are invited to upload their materials onto our platform, which will include, you know, obviously photos, resume, video of their work.

both in contemporary and classical work. Some classwork might be included. And then over the course of a couple of months, our team goes through and calls it down. And then I look at the final cut of artists and we choose dancers for the company as well as for Ballet Austin too and our fellowship program through this process. It's been really effective. When I first started the first audition,

that I held as director was at the School of American Ballet and I remember 250 people showing up and I thought, I don't know what I'm seeing, I can't see anyone, no one can dance, no one can do anything and it was always this idea, how do we get to a place where it's more equitable? ⁓ Those people who might not be competitive are not spending money. You if you think about

250 people, airfare, accommodations, tens of thousands of dollars wasted in a two hour period. I I just think it's so wasteful. So in this situation, we call this down to those people that I would most like to see, and we invite them to Austin over the course of a couple of days. There will be two or three different periods throughout the late winter, early spring, and they come to Austin.

and we do a class together. So there are all the people who are competitive come together to have class together and I look at them and we do some repertoire. And the most important thing is I'm able to actually have a conversation with people because it's in the conversation that you really decide, are we really compatible? Are we on the right? Are we all on the same page? Do we share the value of what we're doing? Are we all gonna be collaborative? That allows us to have that time to be engaged.

in that process and it's been so successful for us and I feel much better about the process.

Jared Redick (15:38)
I've heard this echoed a couple times from other directors who have been on the show talking about the need for the chemistry to be right within the company, know, versus just a dancer who is amazing and has all the technical abilities and things, the possibilities that you might need, but it really comes down to that chemistry within the work environment. And it sounds like you're doing that very successfully at Ballet Austin.

Stephen Mills (16:01)
or

small company. To me, there are a lot of people who can do this work. But who am I going to have the most success with? Who am I going to enjoy being in the studio with most? Because the last thing I want to do with my time is fight with people. If we're all on the same page, if we're all rowing in the same direction at the same time, we'll all find success. And so to me, the culture is really, really important.

Jared Redick (16:26)
You have these dancers there doing the company class and you're watching them and so what kind of things really catch your eye from a movement standpoint or a dancer standpoint or an artistic standpoint? What really catches your eye? Obviously besides the interview that you were just talking about.

Stephen Mills (16:41)
Well, I mean, just from a technical standpoint, what are they doing with their facility? I don't know that we all have to have the same body type. I'm not really focused on that sort of thing. But what are they doing with what they have? That's important. How do they hear music? Do they hear music? You know, we train in a sort of Balanchine style. So if this dancer comes from Russian background, that's okay. But are they willing to be adaptive and

push in a different direction? Are they open to thinking about things differently? Because, know, generally for us, when someone's entering the company, they are the beginning of their journey. And so people don't know what they don't know and maybe have not been exposed to the principles and the ideas that we're going to talk about. Are their minds open enough to do that and willing to do that?

Because again, there are a lot of places to be happy and it may or may not be Ballet Austin. But the important part in this job, which is difficult to begin with, is to find a place where you can be happy, you can be fulfilled, always pushing yourself in a positive direction.

Jared Redick (17:53)
On that note of thinking about dancers, don't know what they don't know, what do you wish more young dancers knew about company life?

Stephen Mills (18:02)
Well, I think that very often when I hire a dancer, generally, you know, if I take a dancer from our Ballet Austin 2 company, I need to assure them that they have not arrived. This is not an arrival. This is a beginning. They've ended whatever it was they were doing before, and now they're starting something new, and they're just at the beginning. When you're at the beginning, there's so many possibilities. And so again,

collaboration, openness, willingness to experiment, being in it, not having all the answers because if you had all the answers, you'd be doing something else. The life of an artist is one of questioning. What are the questions we're gonna be asking? What are the questions that you as an artist are gonna be asking yourself throughout your career in order to learn more about dance, but also to learn more about yourself?

Jared Redick (18:51)
Because that curiosity really is the pathway for your own artistic and technical growth, so to speak. Sounds like that seems important to you.

Stephen Mills (18:59)
You're not an artist if you're not curious. That's just simple. I mean, there are dancers and there are artists and they're not always the same thing. And there's nothing wrong with being one or the other. Both are necessary, but an artist is someone who's always questioning, always asking. What more? What else?

Jared Redick (19:18)
It's such great perspective and thank you for sharing that. And I'm sure our listeners will be really happy to hear that because I don't think we talk enough about that for two young dancers when we're training them. I know that we try and maybe they just need to keep hearing it. This is an artistic endeavor, right? There is the physical aspect to it, but we are in this profession to be artists, to be communicators, to express ourselves individually and through the company and with our peers and choreographers and stagers and through the work.

So I think that's really important.

Stephen Mills (19:49)
And also if you're dancing a role that is telling a story, there's a narrative. I there are so many things to know about that person, right? About that person you're inhabiting. It's not just you put these steps on and you go out and you show off in front of an audience. That's so shallow. There's so much more to know about inhabiting a character and ⁓ that is the questioning part of it.

Jared Redick (20:16)
Absolutely. We know mental health is so important for the well-being of dancers, especially in this profession that demands so much of them physically. What would be one habit or mindset that has served you throughout your career?

Stephen Mills (20:31)
I come from a very different generation and my background in terms of people mentoring to me was not very great and I always committed myself to doing better for dances than what I got because again, it's not just the physical aspect of it which obviously is very difficult but the emotional aspect of it and the psychological aspect of it. My body isn't right, my technique isn't strong.

don't like looking at myself in the mirror. I am not doing well enough for my partner. I mean, there are so many things to be concerned about and fixate on. And in some way, I was thinking about this today, I honestly think that some of it can be mitigated through your own personal reflection, honest reflection, right? Not beating yourself up about what you're not, but celebrating that which you are.

but I also think that some of it is just inherent in dancing. I can't say that I have fully wrapped my head around best practices in that respect, but for young dancers, just starting out, there is no place that is perfect. It just does not exist. In my organization, I have 24 people and the only person in the company who's happy is the one that's standing in the middle, because that's just human nature, right?

I can't fight that, you know, and so people have to be able to put that into perspective for themselves. They've got to be willing to engage with that as difficult as that may be. And also, I mean, if one finds himself in a situation where they're not supported, it's important to find another place. And if you can't find that place, it's important to move yourself out of the situation, right? You know, I've made a life and dance.

I have not been unemployed since I was 18 years old. But dance is just one aspect of life. There are a lot of beautiful things to be involved in life. And if dance is not that thing, it's important to recognize that it finds something that fulfills you. And so I think that the most important aspect of what I just said was reflection, personal reflection. And I think that many dancers, because we're sort of trained to look at the person at the front of the room as the person who knows everything and

that person has always had their own similar situations to the one the dance is experiencing. so asking for advice, asking for help, I think it's important to ask for help when you feel like you need it. And if you're in a good company, they're gonna help you find those resources.

Jared Redick (23:10)
Yeah, and I think that this is kind of a generational shift of these conversations around mental health and the well-being of dancers. Unfortunately, there's an idea of the disposability of dancers because we know that there's lots of dancers looking for jobs, but the conversations in companies of what I hear is really trying to nurture these young artists and finding ways to not necessarily make them happy, but find ways to help them where they are on their artistic journey and

That seems like a very different conversation than when I was in a company. And I'm happy to hear it. It's still not in the entire industry, but it certainly, there's a groundswell in moving it forward as the art form and ballet companies globally are evolving in that direction.

Stephen Mills (23:56)
Well, in my background, what I found was that in some situations, it was just easier for management to move on to another dancer because it was too hard to face maybe the situation that they were being confronted with. Like a dancer with an eating disorder or a dancer who has a learning difference in terms of choreography or classroom steps or.

whatever the situation may be, it was just easier to move on to someone else. I mean, in life, relationships are messy. They just are. And just because you're in a classical company or a dance company, you're still gonna have those conversations with someone. I think that if you take the 40,000 foot view, looking down on it, I've always looked at it this way. To me, we are all living a life that is gonna be filled with experiences. And we just happen to be

having those experiences through the lens of dance. These social questions around us aren't going away just because we don't want to face them. I've talked a lot about collaboration in the studio, and part of that collaboration is not just how do you do this step, but it's like, who are you and what's happening in your life right now that you're willing to share? And this is what's happening with me and how are we together in that way? And building a bridge.

personal bridge. And so if you're in the business of building these bridges, it's really hard to not take into account that people also have problems and want to help.

Jared Redick (25:32)
It's such a human point of view, right? And we're all human beings and we're all just moving through life together and we take whatever paths are before us and whatever interests us and you never know where that journey might lead us.

Stephen Mills (25:45)
I just think that if you're not focusing on the humanity of it, dance is completely irrelevant. I agree. And so we have to think about the way art is about making connections and helping young dancers on their journey is part of that connection that I'm trying to make.

Jared Redick (26:04)
I love that and I'm so encouraged for the young dancers who are listening and are trying to figure out what their next step is and they'd be very fortunate to work with a director such as yourself with your viewpoint and your knowledge and wisdom and just experience.

Stephen Mills (26:19)
Well, thank you. Thank you. I have a lot of great colleagues out there too. right now, it's a wonderful landscape of leadership across the country. And so that's encouraging.

Jared Redick (26:28)
Yeah, we've

seen that generational shift. All the turnover and directorships in the last, I don't know, the last two, three years has been historic. We haven't seen that many artistic directorships, big companies, small companies. Speaking about being an artistic director, did you ever imagine yourself becoming an artistic director when you were a younger dancer? Is this like a lifelong dream that you fulfilled or something that your journey just took you in that direction?

Stephen Mills (26:54)
Well, I never actually imagined myself being a dancer. You know, I didn't start to dance until I was 18 and never imagined that I would be able to make a career as a dancer. After one year, I remember having conversation with a colleague and I'm saying that in air quotes, a colleague, and this was a completely different time. Ballet and modern dance were very separated at the time, but he said, you know, you don't really have a very good body. Maybe you should go be a modern dancer.

And I thought, obviously I'd be happy to have done that now. But at the time I thought, well, what does that even mean? And you know, in the next year I got a job with the Harkness Ballet. So you just never know. I mean, on your journey as in any field, it's just one day at a time. You just hope to keep moving forward one day after another. And at the end, you you look back on a career and say, I can't even believe that happened. So.

No, I never expected to be an artistic director and it is the biggest shock of my life. After the first year I didn't get fired and here I am 25 years later still doing it. I'm very pleased and very humbled by it actually.

Jared Redick (28:04)
That's incredible story really to think about. You just didn't have that perspective of being a dancer and here you are having such a long tenure as an artistic director, which is the role itself is hard. Much less having a long tenure. 25 years is, that is a significant milestone. Kudos to you and congratulations once again on that. That's wonderful. 25 years, I know you have a big upcoming season, but outside of that, what's a dream project or collaboration?

Stephen Mills (28:23)
Thank you very much.

Jared Redick (28:32)
that's still on your radar maybe in the future that you're trying to work towards.

Stephen Mills (28:36)
I don't know. I've been blessed with so many collaborations. Next season, the big project that I'm working on is a project that sort of has brought a lot of sort of my personal interests together with ballet on a project about Marie Antoinette and where she's a vampire, which I think is very weird. Well, guys always get to play the vampires. It's very rare that women get to be vampires.

But you know, the idea that, you know, when we think about the French Revolution, we don't think about Louis XVI, we think about Marie Antoinette. She's, you know, sort of this immortal character. And so I've got that. My family is from a French background. And so it's sort of just bringing those things together in a sort of personal way. But I've been able to work with so many great collaborators on so many different projects. You know, you talked about, like the Holocaust and Humanity Project, not, you know,

Not only did I not think I was going to be a dancer, I never could have imagined working on a human rights social justice project in collaboration with Holocaust survivors and not being Jewish and not being from a survivor family, being able to find some relevance in my personal life and what was going on at the time and bringing that into the form of a dance, which has had such an effect on me, on our organization and different communities around the world.

Again, you these blessings come to you and you don't know why. And that was one of those that I didn't plan. So who knows what's in the future.

Jared Redick (30:05)
It's a really great project. I have not seen the documentary, but I am going to definitely try and watch it in the next week or so. We will definitely post a link to it on the Company Secrets website so people can go and look at it directly through that link. I'd like to end every interview with kind of our final circle question, which is, what's one piece of advice you'd give your younger self at the start of your professional career?

Stephen Mills (30:32)
I think it would be to just relax. You when I first began dancing, there was an emphasis on very young dancers being principal dancers. Gelsie Kirkland, and it was that era of these 18-year-old principal dancers. And here I was, 18, and I had just started dancing. So it was like I came out of the gate running as hard as I could. I think that set me up well, but in retrospect,

understanding that if you are fortunate enough to have a career in dance, it's gonna be over a period of time. And success takes a while and with that success comes a lot of failure, know, a lot of experimentation, a lot of travel. And so I would just say slow down, enjoy the opportunities as they come up and just know that it's one foot in front of the other. Believe in yourself on your journey.

Jared Redick (31:29)
That's wonderful advice. Thank you so much for sharing that for our audience and for me as well. I find our interview, I'm so inspired listening to all the things you've done and kind of your journey as being a male body dancer in the field. You know, I hear a lot of the things, parallels in your journey that were similar to mine, right? Everyone has their own journey and certainly hard to be a male dancer in the United States. I love to hear how inspiring some of these projects are, the creativity.

the humanity and the humility you come to the work with. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate you finding time in your very busy schedule, especially when you have a little bit of downtime right now.

Stephen Mills (32:08)
It's been a pleasure to be with you and I will look forward to listening to my colleagues on your other podcasts.

Jared Redick (32:14)
Well, great. Thank you so much for being here, Stephen. We'll link to the Ballet Austin site where you can learn more about the company and follow the upcoming 25th anniversary season. If you liked our conversation here today, you can follow Company Secrets Podcast on all platforms and on our website, companysecretspodcast.com. Thank you for listening, because the stage is only part of the story.

Stephen Mills (32:16)
Thanks Jared.