There Is No “I” in Theater

Dower can talk for hours about his background—or his “narrative,’’ as he calls it. He first encountered theater after the chorus director at his high school busted him and his stoner friends for smoking weed at a football game. Their punishment? He made them all join the chorus. Dower ended up playing Emile de Becque in the school’s production of South Pacific, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about, not so coincidentally, racial prejudice.

After graduating from American University, in Washington, DC, he spent some time working in politics, but became disillusioned. “It was just a bad environment for a hayseed,” he says, and leaves it at that. He and his wife, Denice Stephenson, moved to a sixth-floor walkup in Brooklyn and got involved in housing and tenants’ rights. For any other young guy without legal training, it would have been a fruitless endeavor. But “I’m tall,” Dower says. “I look like I have some authority just by showing up.” That experience ignited his passion for social justice, which has defined his career ever since.

The couple moved to San Francisco in 1987, where Dower spent four years tending bar at Zuni Café, an upscale restaurant. Dower’s wife received an appointment as a rent-board commissioner, and he won a local city magazine’s award for “Best Bartender” in 1989. (It’s still on his résumé.)

While at Zuni, Dower founded a troupe called the Z Collective. Its first production was a scrappy affair performed on the beach, and it was a serendipitous success. Oskar Eustis, who is now artistic director of New York’s Public Theater, was heading San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre Company at the time. A frequent customer at Zuni Café, Eustis remembers being struck by Dower’s selflessness. “He passionately cared about other people’s work and the creation of other people’s work,” Eustis recalls. “That is so rare.”

Dower ran the Z Collective and its successor, the Z Space Studio, for nearly 20 years. “He was a highly ethical presenter of work and utterly down to earth, this cool guy with the glasses and a sweater vest,” says Richard Montoya, a cofounder of Culture Clash, who first met Dower there. But Montoya sensed that Dower was an underappreciated “prophet in his own land” who needed to leave San Francisco to spread his wings. “He was never part of the establishment crowd,” Montoya says.

Dower ended up at DC’s Arena Stage, where he served as associate artistic director from 2006 to 2012. There, he also nibbled on the hand that fed him, calling out the nonprofit theater industry for abandoning the artistic mission upon which it was founded and failing to support emerging artists. Dower recruited Carl, who was director of artistic development at Steppenwolf Theatre, to join him in creating the American Voices New Play Institute, which launched HowlRound to research controversial issues in theater. “I felt like we were the internal affairs bureau inside the institution holding it accountable,” Carl says. Over time, “That relationship became uncomfortable for me and David and Arena.”

Initially, Arena artistic director Molly Smith agreed to talk about Dower, then canceled at the last minute, citing a busy schedule. But Eustis says he was aware of Dower’s frustration during his later years at Arena. “I never heard about the tension from him but I saw it manifested all the time,” he says. “One could sense that David would put a lot of energy into projects that he didn’t have the ability to make real, and that was very hard for him.”

Disheartened, Dower sent an email to Orchard with the subject line “Brainstorm or Brain Fart.” As it turns out, Orchard thought it was the perfect brainstorm to bring Dower onboard as director of artistic programs in 2012. “I knew he could take it further than I could because of his work as a community organizer,” Orchard says.

Dower and Carl did not arrive at an institution in upheaval. On the contrary, the organization was built on solid ground in just five years. It has gained a reputation for exposing Boston audiences to a wide array of theater from other cultures, from a gamelan opera to Mozart played on marimbas. Over the course of one busy weekend this season, the British troupe Kneehigh performed a sultry version of Tristan & Yseult at the Majestic, while Culture Clash presented a mishmash of multicultural characters at the Paramount. Carl says that eclectic combination—a lavish musical production juxtaposed with an edgy performance piece—defines ArtsEmerson’s aesthetic.

The team wants to make sure that its offerings are experienced by the whole population, not just an elite crowd. “When you go to the expense and effort of bringing works from different cultures to Boston,” Orchard says, “you want to make sure that is penetrating in pockets of the city where it would mean the most.”

Dower believes in theater for all people—and for all artists. He has been at the center of more than a few controversies, however, and says he has “slipped on a few banana peels” along the way. One flare-up occurred in 2012, after Huntington Theatre Company’s managing director, Michael Maso, gave an impassioned speech at the annual Theatre Communications Group conference—in Boston that year—defending regional theaters and the individuals who work in them. He cried “Bullshit!” on the notion that theatrical institutions are “overstuffed bureaucracies.”

“People came up and said, ‘That was weird. He went after you,’” Dower recalls. An intense debate unfolded later on the Internet. Maso is adamant that his comment was not directed at Dower, whom he respects, but he does stand behind his words. “What you have in these institutions are people who are necessary to get the job done,” he says. “They are working extremely hard at an enormous financial sacrifice and they are deeply and passionately dedicated to their art.”

Dower says he was glad to see the conversation unfold publicly and he admits that there is a degree of irony to it, given his promotion. “David is now in a position that he is going to build an institution,” Maso says. “He is clearly an institutional guy.”

HowlRound also has its share of fans and detractors. Abe Rybeck, executive artistic director of the Theater Offensive, Boston’s landmark LGBT theater, describes it as “bold” and “ethical.” But local blogger Thomas Garvey, among other journalists, complained that Carl had “shut down free speech” in 2013 after she published an apology for a piece in the HowlRound journal that included snarky comments about a Culture Clash production. Garvey declined a request for an interview and scrubbed posts from his website, the Hub Review, after I contacted him. Carl says the episode was blown out of proportion. “I was thinking it should be an ABC series, and we could call it The Apology,’’ she says. “It felt like melodrama in a way.’’

The HowlRound journal, which attracts 40,000 viewers a month, allows anyone to participate, provided they adhere to guidelines that call for “positive inquiry.” That rattles some, including Robert Brustein, founding artistic director of the A.R.T., noting that while he applauds ArtsEmerson’s productions, he is not a fan of HowlRound. “What is it called?” he asks. “HobKnob? It is driven by contributors, not editors. The articles are not commissioned or accepted on their excellence, but rather on the contributions to wider representation, and that is more a form of sociology to me than it is a contribution to art.”

Brustein has long held that the arts are a meritocracy, not a democracy, and he is a longtime skeptic of the idea that art can bring about social change. But the ArtsEmerson mission is not new. Other organizations have made strides to diversify and appeal to a wider audience—with varying degrees of success. The A.R.T., in fact, launched a three-year effort called “The Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue” in 1998. Led by performance artist Anna Deavere Smith, it brought a panoply of artists to Cambridge to showcase works about social issues such as race, class, violence, and war. It was primarily about producing work, though, and not about creating lasting conversations in the community.

Dower and his team, however, aim to create long-term relationships and partners. Their vision involves embracing community arts groups as well as presenting the best in national and international theater.

Actor and playwright Daniel Beaty, whose plays have been performed at ArtsEmerson, is central in the leadership team’s mission. Emerson College received a $350,000 grant from the Barr Foundation to bring Beaty here for a three-year residency to conduct a project called “I Dream: Boston.” Its goal is to gather diverse members of the community; identify challenges (specifically, but not exclusively, around race); and create solutions, using the arts as a tool to promote change. “There are urgent challenges that are percolating seemingly under the surface and are now boiling over. If artists don’t speak to that, I don’t understand why we exist,’’ Beaty says.

The talk is lofty. The aspirations are high. But the details are fuzzy.“It is a grand vision, I am aware of that,’’ Howse admits, adding that the work is messy and hard to define. And even Beaty acknowledges that the efforts of one theater organization cannot create sweeping change. “I am stepping out on a limb to say this,” he says, “but I don’t think theater can do it alone.”

So how do you do it? How do you break down decades of mistrust? If your mission is to use the arts to benefit the “community,’’ what do members of the community think? LaDawn Strickland, a Mattapan native who was hired by the college to coordinate the “I Dream” project, is well aware of the long-held perception that Boston’s arts institutions are not open to all. During an interview at the Paramount, she pulls out a slick brochure for the project and says she doesn’t simply want to hand the community a “shiny thing” and tell them it will be good for them to participate. Frequently, she says, outsiders with big grants come to the community to create programs of their own design, which breeds apprehension. Neither Beaty nor Dower is from Boston, but she is. “There is the mistrust, but people say, ‘Wait a sec. Who is she? You went to school here? I’ll give you a little bit of a pass, but not much.’’’

There are other barriers to break down as well. There is a perception in certain circles that Emerson College is more known for its celebrity graduates than its community engagement. Candelaria Silva-Collins, a longtime arts consultant who now coordinates the Huntington’s Community Membership Program, isn’t blind to the perceived barriers. She is also intimately involved in part of the solution: In September, she helped ArtsEmerson launch an unheralded play-reading group at the Boston Public Library’s Dudley Branch in Roxbury. Four times a year, some 35 people meet for three hours on a Saturday to discuss a play presented by ArtsEmerson. Emerson graduate students lead the discussions, and the whole group attends the play, has dinner, and meets with cast members. Dower is so excited about this program that he sent me a video clip from a panel discussion about the group. In the video, one member, Noel Johnson, eloquently explains that she had always felt Emerson was a “disconnected academic institution,” but says the book-group experience changed her mind.

Later, Dower invites me to a gathering of community partners, at which he and his team unveil the upcoming 2015-2016 ArtsEmerson season. Two dozen members of organizations ranging from the Hyde Square Task Force to the National Center of Afro-American Artists are on hand, and Dower seems to know every one of them well.

“You are the first people we are talking to about our season,” he says as the meeting starts, “and that is important.” This event takes place before ArtsEmerson presents the season to its board and its funders, not to mention members of the media, who get the season announcement two weeks later. Dower went to the community first— unheard of in the arts world, where announcements are carefully choreographed to maximize coverage.

Of course, Dower runs his community meetings the same way he runs staff debriefings. He and his comrades take turns introducing the eclectic roster of shows, which for the upcoming season will include three Latino plays, a Russian production of Chekhov, Beaty’s play Mr. Joy, Company One’s production of An Octoroon, and the return of the South African Isango Ensemble. After the presentation, Dower opens a free-flowing discussion. Courtney Grey, the director of trauma services for the Boston Public Health Commission, applauds the quality of the upcoming season. “No matter how many times you bring Alvin Ailey here, that isn’t going to meet my needs,” he says. Dower is all over this. “One of the things we battle is that people equate community with a loss of excellence,’’ he says. “We are trying to point out that lie.”

This is the kind of behind-the-scenes work that Dower and his company are doing to build trust and audiences at the same time. The triumvirate is still in its infancy stage, and it is undergoing growing pains, to be sure. But when Dower was a community organizer, he knew he had to change one mind at a time. Yes, his goals are still aspirational, but he is adamant that he is in this for the long haul. He may have been reticent to talk at first, but the conversation has begun. Time will tell whether his team’s dream will translate into action and if action will transform into lasting change.