Sarah Lynn Brown - Leavenworth Space
APRIL 1, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.
I’m doing okay. I think ‘okay’ and ‘fine’ is like the word that everyone is kind of using. It’s day to day. There are good days, and there are bad days. I’m trying to remain grateful for everything that I have that is keeping me safe and sane right now. Trying to focus on those types of things instead of the things that have been lost.
Josh - Can you tell us a little about Leavenworth Space?
Yeah, so…this was not part of the plan haha. So I had worked with Nebraska Shakespeare for many, many years and was let go at the end of last year and didn’t know what I was going to do. Do I stay in Omaha? That was the big questions everyone was asking me. Are you staying here? Are you going somewhere else? And I didn’t want to leave this community because I felt like I still had work to do. I felt like I still had something to offer here. And I think the art that I want to create definitely has a place in Omaha. So I was thinking about working collaboratively with a couple of organizations, trying to kind of self-produce my own work. And then a friend of mine called me and she’s like, “Hey…do you know there’s this space coming up for lease on Leavenworth street.” And I said I’m not really looking for a space and said, “Oh you should go and see it.” And I was like, “Alright.” So I cam to see the space, no intention of wanting it…and I stupidly fell in love with it because it is so different than anything I’ve worked with before. Shakespeare tends to be really big and really broad and theater is going in that direction. It’s going into larger houses and more tech. It’s trying to compete with film a lot instead of going back to the roots of what it really is which is just a relationship between the actor and the audience. And I thought that this space would demand that. You can’t hide behind anything. You can’t even really hang lights haha. You can’t have any more than really a few people in a cast and a few people in the audience so it really puts pressure on the roots of what theater is.
Josh - What kind of role do you think art will play through this and even after?
Um…every part haha all of the parts. It’s interesting, when a lot of my freelance jobs went away, a lot of organizations are trying to figure out how to do what they do on a virtual medium. So trying to have classes online and do workshops online…how can we do things digitally? And so I took a bunch of online panels. All these people that have all this experience doing online classes and all of them were talking about the creativity and the art of what it’s going to take in order to keep that connection through this medium. I actually think that what we do is goin to be so much more imperative to remaining connected as people, as a community. We’ve had theater and we’ve had art for a very long time. I’m comforted…it’s interesting one of the first things I wanted to read when all this was happening was Greek theater. Like, this has been going on for a really long time. We have had a lot of shifts in how we exist and our need for human connection and our need for storytelling has always been a part of our fabric and I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere.
Tragedy is something that…I work a lot with Shakespeare, also lots of tragedy, lots of blood. In the beginning of my career I loved, like you know, the Titus Andronicus’ and the Medea’s and the ones that had so much blood and violence. And as I’ve gone further into my career and started to develop more as an artist and a storyteller I’m more interested in the stories about vulnerability and the stories about bravery and the stories about love…because I think those are the harder ones to do. And so I think we will fight really hard in our storytelling for connection. I was actually kind of dabbling in writing a little script when all of this started and it was going to be, like, angry and dark and twisted and as I kept working on it, and continue to work on it, it’s starting to be all about hope and connection and all about how we can support one another. It’s interesting how this will effect how we tell stories.
I am a go-getter. I function really well with having long to-do lists and a very structured, regimented day. This is teaching me patience. Which I think will help my art because there are times when I’m not as specific or as detail oriented because I’m moving too fast or I miss an opportunity or I miss a connection with a person because I have blinders on and this is forcing me to slow down. I think that will positively effect the relationships I have with fellow artists and will positively effect my work.
When all of this happened I was like, “Oh my gosh I have a micro space we can’t be six feet from one another. What a terrible time to have this space.” And then the more I was thinking about it the more I think we really are going to want that personal connection and this may actually be the best space for that to happen. To have performances, to have workshops, to have training here with a small group of people will highlight the experience and will deepen the experience, I think. And also thinking that a lot of people and a lot of art, especially right now but maybe for the foreseeable future, is gonna have to be long distance. And how do we do that. I had a project that was cancelled. It was a Romeo and Juliet performance I was doing with Opera Omaha and I got together with all the actors and I was like, “I need to hear the words out loud. Like we need to put them in the ether so I can, like, release this project.” And so we got together on Zoom and we read it, and it wasn’t perfect and it made me and everybody slow down, but it also gave me hope because the words are just as impactful even if we are far apart. So how we find those new ways to connect when we can’t do it the old way. We’re learning new tools.
Josh - Speaking of Shakespeare, is there anything from his plays or anything that stick out to you right now?
Yeah he wrote about the plague a lot. Because the plague was happening throughout his entire career. It would go away and come back. He had to go into quarantine, there were times he had to flee the city, theaters got shut down…so plagues are in his plays a lot. Romeo and Juliet’s a big one. The reason Romeo and Juliet are not together is because the letter that Friar was sending to Romeo to say “Hey Juliet’s gonna fake her death, don’t freak out” never got to him because the messenger that was taking it couldn’t get into the city because they were shutdown for quarantine. So yeah and you’re like that’s why they’re not together?! The plague was a really big thing. The year he was kind of quarantined during the plague, Shakespeare wrote some of his best works. So I think a lot of people, a lot of artists right now are talking about what we can do in this time, like how can we use this creative time and I think that’s so important. And also don’t put the pressure on yourself like I need to create, I need to continue working. Don’t feel the pressure to write King Leer, because you probably won’t do that and that’s okay.
I think all of this will change theater in how we produce. I think it will make us be more intentional with our work. It will make us think in terms of the stories we want to tell and how we want people to connect with those stories. There are some really large theaters that are shut down for the foreseeable future. And I think it will effect budgets and I think it will effect production value. It will demand that we are smarter with our resources and I think that is true across any media, just across the whole board. To think about how we use our resources. And hopefully that pressure and those limitations will bring about something that we didn’t know we could do with theater. That will provide a different level of creativity and challenge us, in a way. Art love parameters. So if we really put some serious parameters on our art, which is what I think is about to happen and is happening, what are we going to learn?
It’s been a challenging couple of years. There’s been a lot of transition in my personal life, my professional life. Being the Interim Artistic Director at a company I worked for for a very long time, making some really bold and strong choices, and then having that not be what they were looking for, but also knowing that that’s the type of theater that I want to do. I want things that are diverse and inclusive and think about the voices that they put on stage and think about the stories that they’re telling…since that has become kind of the flagship or the cornerstone of my work…looking towards how I can facilitate that myself. If your not gonna be able to do it through a certain organization, how do you self-produce? If this is important to you, if this is something that I feel is important for the community, how do I figure out a way to make it happen? And if it’s not happening anywhere else, but there is interest in it…there are people that want to be challenged, there are people that want to see this representation happen in theater…I saw them lot last year. There were a lot of people that were so supportive of the direction that things were going in and so I want to continue that work and provide that opportunity for those artists and this community.
Being a woman in this community as an artist…especially in the time that I grew up in and the work that I cut my teeth on which was Shakespeare…it’s so incredibly male heavy. The writing is male heavy, directing, producing, is all really male heavy but it’s starting to transition into providing opportunities for female voices. But it’s still a really big challenge. Having a woman run a room makes people really uncomfortable still. It’s interesting to have been a part of a company that was run by men for a really long time and to watch how that leadership was navigated and then when a woman took leadership, how all of it changed. How things were handled differently and I’m a different person so maybe that had something to do with it and I’m also a different gender so that probably had something to do with it too haha. But I really lacked in this community was mentorship. There was not a real strong female artist…there were people who I could look up to but never anyone who reached out, took me under their wing, or anything like that. And so a few years ago I started a mentorship program and was able to connect some mentees and some mentors and start to see that kind of blossom and I think that’s so important in our art form, especially in theater, and we don’t do it as much. There isn’t this master-apprenticeship that there used to be when Shakespeare was writing, sorry I keep going back to Shakespeare it’s all I know! Haha. But like that’s how you got to a higher role is you would be an apprentice under the person playing Macbeth and eventually you would move into that role after working with them. And we don’t really have that anymore so the idea of mentorship has been really big for me and trying to figure out how I can offer those opportunities for young women in this community. So trying to continue to have personal relationships, especially during this time. Checking in, “How are you doing, how are you feeling?” You know, giving them open spaces. We’ve started some Zoom writing groups to get together to just see each other’s faces and write and share some things. Just being able to stay connected that way and I’m hoping that that is something that will continue after all of this is done and will help create stronger roots. Especially with women in this community. So when it is our time to take over, we will have a really strong network in order to do so.
Josh - Is there anything else you want to say?
It’s okay to be sad. That’s alright. And live in your gratitude as much as you possibly can. We are all, especially in the Midwest, extremely lucky. I have some friends that are on the coast and there are some…some really bad things that are happening…so trying to continue to be really grateful for what we have.
