The Artistic Director

Introduction: During these challenging times, I will be sharing a range of ideas, dreams, essays and mostly-true tales stemming from the six decades (so far) of this wonderful career in the theater. I hope you enjoy.
– Joe Keefe

Theater is an essential, necessary component of the health of a thriving society. Sharing the experiences of living stories helps us, as individuals, understand the people and world around us. Experiencing dramatic moments in a communal environment, immersed in a group of our peers, brings us together through laughter or suspense; it binds us through rising tension or unexpected laughter; we smile through the song or our eyes well at the romantic breakup. Through theater, we see ourselves and what we hope to be and/or we see others and what we try not to be.

If those ideas form the essence of theater, its mechanism is living, breathing creation. Theater is, at its core, the immediate creation of story – human, hilarious, suspenseful, absurd, frightful and fantastic stories. Stories are as old as mankind; they are the way we learn and how we amuse ourselves. Theater is a living form of story and it “makes real what is not yet real”. So this is the role of the Artistic Director: to make something (great) out of nothing.

While we think of theater as a fun night out, the planning for that night begins many years, decades, even centuries before that dinner and show. Euripides crafted the classic tragedy Medea twenty five hundred years ago (probably after an extended argument with his wife) and the story of betrayal and treachery and the shocking lack of anger management skills still resonates today.

The creation of the show you have tickets for started at least two years prior to the big night. Artistic planning for sets, costumes, direction, casting and related elements takes months, if not years to properly manage. Budgeting and marketing analyses occur even before those necessary components. Selection and placement of a new show within a framework of many productions is hammered out prior to the financial processes. This is the life of an Artistic Director: considering the options, selecting the show, making sure it will sell, finding exceptional talents to build it, finding ways to say yes to those talented people, hovering over each process and then crossing every finger on opening night.

Ultimately, the Artistic Director builds the personality of a theater. In the case of our wonderful Metropolis, the personality traits we seek are energetic, unusual, a bit feisty, authentic, hilariously dramatic or dramatically funny, and entertaining as heck. We work hard to get our shows as close to our audience as possible, physically and emotionally, and that communal intimacy is rewarded time and time again.

I look forward to sharing our next show with you.

Yours in Great Theater,

Joe Keefe