It has been a tumultuous few weeks for Shakespeare & Company. In early March, executive director Rick Dildine abruptly resigned to return to Shakespeare Festival St. Louis as artistic and executive director. That was just six months after he came to Lenox. Days later, three members of the company’s board of trustees, including a chairperson and two vice chairs, resigned from their posts. WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief Jim Levulis spoke with founding artistic director Tina Packer, who serves on the board of trustees, about the departure of Dildine and the others.
“I was fairly shocked,” Packer said. “We live in the world of Shakespeare plays. I certainly wasn’t expecting it and I don’t think any of us were. So it was surprising. Having said that, I think we’ve adjusted remarkably well and fast. Of course I’m far more interested in what it means going forward. We do want to look at what happened obviously, but we’re far more interested in thinking ‘OK, so what steps do we need to take now?’ We had worked very hard for a whole year asking ourselves ‘What kind of person would we like to lead us and what should their responsibilities be?”
Less than a week after Dildine announced his departure, Trustees chair Sarah Hancock and vice chair Claudia Perles resigned from their posts. Vice Chair Charles Schader is leaving the board altogether. Packer, a close friend of Hancock, says she was saddened by the recent spate of resignations.
“I think it’s in turmoil, but I don’t think it’s in danger,” Packer said. “What I mean by that is none of us were expecting it. Rick called a meeting at 3 o’clock and you all got the press release at 4 o’clock so it was a case of ‘Alright here we are, let’s see what we’re going to do about this now.’ In the meeting with us, he emphasized that he really needed to look after his husband and that he felt that he couldn’t keep on going forward with this. I’ve since heard other reasons for why what happened has happened, but we [the board] haven’t all come together and asked what those reasons are. The board had an informal meeting to say ‘Alright what are the repercussions of this and what are the ways in which we can step forward and try to get as clear as we can about what happened.’ So we’re not really in turmoil because we’re company and we’ve all been working with each other for a long time.”
The board has appointed Steve Ball interim managing director while Ariel Bock and Jonathan Croy will serve as interim co-artistic directors.
“We’re working on things we were working on,” Packer said. “The box office is open. We’re selling all our programs. They’re all doing very well for the summer. So our daily lives are much more about doing those things and then saying ‘Alright how are we going to assess what happened and go forward? And obviously who’s going to be the new chairman of the board? I think the company is going where it’s always been going. Why we asked Rick to come and join us was that we felt we needed more organizational structure. Its grown and grown and taking on this property which is a huge piece of property. So we’ve had two things that we’ve really been doing all these years. One is trying to develop the property and get it up to the standards where we can really use, which is a whole project in itself. Then we’ve been running the programs which have been expanding all the time. We felt that we needed somebody who could be in charge of the whole lot, get the whole overview of both the property and then all the organizational stuff that we were doing so that the artists of the company didn’t have to think so much about the organizational structures. We thought we had put something into that would give us a little relief from the day to day organization and allow us to go more deeply into the programming. So that’s where we thought we were heading. Obviously we need to now reassess. But that’s not to say we don’t have the people ready to go that can hold place together. We do.”
Two months after Dildine arrived in Lenox in September 2014, artistic director Tony Simotes resigned even though his contract at the time ran until May 2015.
“Essentially the way that it was going to develop was not necessarily the way that Tony would’ve developed it,” Packer said. “I do think we’ll review everything that has happened in last six months. But I don’t think that we ourselves know absolutely how certain things happened and I think the thing about Tony is one of those things.”
The reasons for Simotes’ departure haven’t been fully revealed, vagueness Packer attributes to severance negotiations. Because of that process Packer says Simotes won’t return to help lead the company. Neither would she, saying she is busy with book launches.
“Structurally we just can’t do it,” Packer said. “We’d need to sort out what happened since Tony left. That is really the issue that’s before us. I wouldn’t come back because I just think that it’s not going to help for me to come back.”
Speaking with St. Louis Public Radio, Dildine said he wanted to be closer to the artists and programming and that his role at Shakespeare and Company was more administrative. Packer says the company didn’t know about Dildine’s desire to be closer to the artistic side of things.
“The company itself is strong,” Packer said. “I know we brought an outsider in to help us really manage and organize ourselves and for whatever reason that didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean to say that we’re not perfectly capable of on a very day to day level of managing and organizing ourselves because we are. It was the big picture that we were bringing Rick in for.”
Shakespeare & Company’s 2015 summer season begins May 22nd and runs until September 13th.
