Leading with Vision: Diverse Approaches to Leadership in the Performing Arts

Discover how visionary leaders are shaping the future of the performing arts in our latest feature, "Leading with Vision: Diverse Approaches to Leadership in Performing Arts." ISPA members share their strategies for navigating evolving cultural landscapes, embracing inclusion, and fostering creativity in leadership. Dive into stories of innovation and resilience that are redefining how the arts inspire and impact communities worldwide.

Quicklinks:

• Stephanie Jenke, Gasteig Muenchen GmbH
• Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, ASU Gammage
• Simon Wellington, Performing Lines

How would you describe your leadership style, and how has it evolved over the course of your career in the performing arts?

I would consider it a modern leadership style—one that takes an integrative approach toward team members and forms a foundation for agile project management where appropriate. The goal is to recognize connections and seek new perspectives to improve the team's work processes.

What role does mentorship and community-building play in your leadership approach, and how do you foster the next generation of leaders in the arts?

Mentorship in my opinion should be aimed at giving the individual team members room for their development and needs. It supports the team in recognizing and developing their own goals and actions. This keeps the team connected to their work and allows them specially to use their strengths. I want to encourage my team to take responsibility. The promotion of skills is crucial here, as is the facilitation of good networking. Learning from each other also plays a major role as well as the realization that lifelong learning is a great enrichment.

In a rapidly changing world, especially with new technologies and shifting audience expectations, how do you ensure your organization remains innovative and relevant?

It is a mixture of open ears and open eyes, market observation, permanent surveys, involvement of young team members and experts from outside, good networking and a large pile of creativity and a colorful bouquet of ideas. The fundamental attitude that change also offers opportunities for new things, for self-reflection and further development, is decisive for successful interaction.

Could you describe your leadership style and how it has evolved over the years of your career in performing arts?

I believe that leadership is not vertical, but horizontal. I take into account all of my staff, from senior staff to mid-level managers to junior staff. Leadership is about listening - listening to your community, to the artists you're working with, and to your colleagues, then formulating a direction from all of that.

It has evolved over the years. When I was a very young leader running my first theater in my twenties I believed I had to have all the answers. I used to say I was the ‘arbiter of taste for my community’. How young and dumb was that? I have changed greatly over those years.

Now, I have a multiplicity of generations to consider - from Boomers to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Being a leader today is about juggling and understanding how all those generations function, what's important to them, and how to interpret vision and direction across multiple generations and platforms.

My style is absolutely participatory. Everyone has something important to say. A leader has to understand that decisions impact people differently.

What role does mentorship and community building play in your leadership approach, and how do you foster the next generation of leaders in the arts?

Mentorship is profound and profoundly important. I myself had a great mentor in Sheldon Stanfield. Mentorship isn't just taking someone under your wing; it's also about providing opportunities.

I mentor several people, predominantly women of color, but also young men of various backgrounds. I believe it's critical to pay forward everything you've had. I think of this industry as a tribe, and as an elder in that tribe, my job is to impart information, open doors and opportunities for them, and let them fly.

How do you ensure your organization remains innovative and relevant in the face of new technologies, AI, and shifting audience expectations?

We bring in guest speakers at all our staff meetings and consultants to work with each team. We recently had a webinar on how AI impacts box office marketing. I depend on information from various sources, including ISPA, Broadway League, and APAP.

Everyone on my team belongs to their national organization, like ISPA, APAP, INTIX, IAVM or USITT. They meet with colleagues, hear what's happening, and bring that knowledge back to share.

We're also working with artists who are involved in AI, AR, and VR, like Lars Jan and Peter Flaherty. They're teaching us along the way. We look at artists we've loved for years, like Bill T. Jones, as well as newer artists like Camille Brown, and see how their work interfaces with new technologies.

We have artists that we have loved for a gazillion years, like a Philip Glass or not half a billion years, like a Grupo de Rua or the brand-new artists that are coming up. We look at the kinds of work that they're doing and how it interfaces. We work with ASU students to say, “We want you to work with these artists so you also understand how much the world has changed.”

We did a program called “Avatar: The Last Airbender” with a live symphony orchestra. I wasn’t familiar with it, but my team said, 'There’s a big audience for this.' So, we added one show, and it sold out in 10 minutes. We added a second, sold out again in 10 minutes. Then a third, same result. In 20 minutes, we sold 9,000 tickets to an event combining animation and live orchestra.

Here's an art form that I didn't grow up with that is clearly important to the communities we're serving and artists that we're working with who are working in that art form. So, we began to look at our programming as well. Will we continue with our very popular and very strong Broadway series? Of course. Will we continue with our commissioning club? Will we commission work from young artists, mid-range artists and senior artists like Kristina Wong? Yes, of course we will. And then we have this whole new slate that says, 'We don't even know what it is.' We've got to educate ourselves, but support those artists, we're doing that as well.

We cannot be afraid. It's here. We cannot be afraid. There's no going back. So, it's how do we integrate it into what we love, believe in, and want to move forward with.

We are brave enough to face the future. We are brave enough to do this work. We are brave enough.

Can you describe your leadership style and how it has evolved over the course of your career in the performing arts?

I’ve got quite a lo-fi approach to leadership. I like to set vision and strategy and work with the team on how to deliver that, but I like to make sure it's an inclusive approach that people are engaged and involved in. I also have a participatory style, so I often like to have a project, rather than just watching everybody else delivering everything.

I think that leadership style evolves over time, not job to job. I started my arts career in Hobart, working in small companies, often given opportunities that I wouldn't have had in larger cities. When you're in those small companies, working with just a few peers and colleagues, you often don't recognize yourself as a leader. Leadership confidence needs to grow over time, especially when you're younger and you're put in those positions, you feel exposed and you worry about making mistakes. There are more confident people who maybe don't experience or acknowledge all of those things, but it took me a while to really acknowledge myself as an individual leader.

I think I've always been good at managing up but when I went to Tasmania to run the Theatre Royal, it was the first time I led as the sole CEO. The vision, the strategy, and overall direction of the whole organization were entirely my responsibility for the first time. So that was a really interesting time to step up, take responsibility and find comfort within that.

The opportunities you get, the experiences you have and the people you work with, really shape the kind of leader you become. I’ve had the privilege of working with some exceptional individuals who have taught me so much. Their insights have unlocked new ways of understanding the context in which I operate, influencing how I approach problem-solving, tackle challenges, communicate, and collaborate with my team.

If you think about the essential tools you develop over time, listening and communication are perhaps the most crucial, especially when leading. In my current role at Performing Lines, with a team spread across Australia—in Perth, Melbourne, Hobart, and Sydney—it’s essential to engage even more in clear and consistent communication.

What role does mentorship and community building play in your leadership approach, and how do you foster the next generation of leaders?

It's more important now than ever, right? Since Covid, we've had so many people leaving the sector. Or people who are struggling to find sustainability in their careers. So, it's on us to try and create that, provide support and training, and help build or strengthen the pathways.

If we train people, we've got to try to ensure that there's a job for them, or that there's a chance of a job for them. How do we place them in positions where they can thrive and have the best opportunities? We run a producer training program at Performing Lines that's been evolving over a couple of years. Some participants have been successful in securing longer-term work following their placements, and we’re trying to identify opportunities within our own organization as we increase capacity over the next year or so. It’s important for participants, our team and stakeholders to see a pathway from our investment in that training and have confidence that we are developing producers with the skills and the talent that we want to see working on our projects.

Everybody's got such a different approach to mentorship. I've done both formal and informal programs and I think everybody should have somebody that they can talk to and throw things against the wall in confidence.

There are pivotal people I've worked for and lessons they've taught me that I draw on all the time - whether it’s operational, managing people and communicating, or unpacking a problem.

In a rapidly changing world, especially with new technologies and shifting audience expectations, how do you ensure your organization remains innovative and relevant?

It doesn't matter whether you are a producer, a presenter, what your role is within our sector, you've got to respond to the ways that people are making and consuming art and culture and then of course, where they're making and consuming it.

There's always a tension between artist led, audience led, experimental versus popular, and so forth. But these debates will always exist and it doesn't matter what the technology or the context is, we've got to keep responding to new innovations, to what people are interested in, to our diverse community, and ensure they are represented.

You find relevance in diversity. Representation is important, because it’s about who you create with, who you create for, and what everyone brings to the experience. At Performing Lines, we are deeply committed to providing a platform for new and underrepresented voices. Diversity is definitely a key marker of relevance for us.

Innovation for me is all about curiosity and being adventurous, but constantly reassessing what we are doing, how we're doing it and who we're doing it with. Being open to talking with a variety of people, and engaging with new partners, expands your knowledge of what’s happening in the world—what people are interested in and how contemporary culture is shifting.

And I think you have to embrace technological advancements, whether it's AI or just digital systems or equipment. We've always done it and we know things will continue to change. We know jobs will change, the relationship to how we create will change. If we don't, then we're going to be left behind.