16 minute read
INTERVIEW WITH ERIN PALMER
AUDIENCE INTERVIEW
ERIN PALMER
entucky Performing Arts is an important anchor in the arts and entertainment landscape in Louisville and throughout the Commonwealth. Its various performance halls and venues host an array of performances, concerts, comedians, K and even presidential debates. In addition to the entertainment that happens on the stage, KPA also plays a role in education and outreach efforts that share the arts with children and adults in community centers, healthcare facilities and schools across
Kentucky. In fact, KPA brings the arts to nearly all counties in the state, ensuring everyone can experience the wonders of the performing arts without barriers or restrictions.
The work that happens behind the scenes to create and implement KPA’s programs is an endless task.
Audience publisher, G, Douglas Dreisbach, caught up with
Erin Palmer, KPA’s Senior Programming Manager, to talk about some of her roles and responsibilities and how she balances everything from artist communications to community programs around the state. This is an excerpt from the full interview. To read it in its entirety, visit Audience502.com.
G. Douglas Dreisbach: What are some of your roles and responsibilities with KPA? Erin Palmer: Traditionally, pre-COVID, my job involved a lot of the work that we would do to bring international and national touring artists to our community, not only to perform on our stages, but also to come into the community and connect with different organizations and individuals for relevant and meaningful experiences. That could be anything from a masterclass at YPAS to a comedy improv workshop with veterans as part of our Warrior Circle program.
In addition, I also work with a lot of our local artists to produce and support their work on our stages. We worked with everyone from Ben Sollee on our Kentucky USA program to Jecorey Arthur and Voices of Kentuckiana, I really try to get to know the artists and their creative endeavors to become familiar with them so that we can support their work.
Nearly five years after their last lightning-tinted volley, the magisterial Montreal psych-rock band returns with their sixth album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings.
...once we are able to open our doors again, people are going to be so hungry to come back into the theaters that it will be a natural revitalization.
Erin Palmer
GDD: How have you had to adjust identifying where the need is, and what support you will be able to provide for the various programs? EP: We were lucky to be able to pivot quickly at the lockdown stage. At that time, we were working towards a lobby reopening from the fire of 2018, so we were very hopeful and excited that we had some receipts and funding from Brown-Forman to create a community reopening celebration of the lobby. Brown-Forman generously repurposed that funding for us to be able to start KPA At Home, which was our digital online series that featured artists from all over Kentucky and ran from April to July of 2020.
There has also been a lot of rescheduling and a lot of “Will we or won’t we?” moments, not only for us, but the whole industry. So, we were taking one step forward, taking one step back, and just being flexible to be able to do the dance and be ready when we can reopen.
We have also had a lot of communication, a lot of amazing partnerships, and a lot of creative thinking about how we can navigate this new world as we come into the spring and summer to find what opportunities there might be to work more outdoors.
GDD: How do you feel KPA programming fits into the Louisville arts ecosystem, especially with the downtown community and revitalization efforts related to the pandemic and recent civil unrest? EP: The stark difference between us as a presenter and a producer is that our resident companies are bringing in and producing their work, and we help supplement or complement what they are doing with artists that are coming in. Most of these artists are coming to Louisville and dipping their toe in the same type of dialogue with their art that potentially our resident companies are. So, it enhances all the different topics that are being discussed by the arts with artists that are, for the most part, not from here. But we do celebrate and welcome that dialogue from the artists that are here, as well, and presenting them on our stages.
We really look to bring in diverse performances and events that support our mission, that support the heritage and arts of the commonwealth. We try to offer something for everyone, from comedy to dance to our Midnight Ramble series, that speaks to the history of the midnight shows in our African American community here in Louisville. And left-of-center programming, like the Second City coming back in, is really helping to complement what is going on with our resident companies and other arts organizations throughout the city, in addition to the outreach that we bring in. A lot of our colleagues, our resident companies, and other arts organizations are doing outreach, and we’re able to connect those artists who are coming to town with that work, which is really exciting, as well.
And as far as the revitalization of downtown, and from COVID — I think once we are able to open our doors again, people are
Aaron Bibelhauser Michael Cleveland
Scott T. Smith Kiana Del Ben Sollee
Otis Junior Zaniah
Maestro J Carly Johnson Philip Hancock
going to be so hungry to come back into the theaters that it will be a natural revitalization. We are eager to be a part of the conversations going on in our city and offering outlets for the arts to be able to propel those conversations and challenge our audiences to have further dialogue and understanding to heal from what our city has experienced, not over the past year, but the past many, many years of our city’s history.
GDD: Are there any events that we can look forward to in the coming months? EP: For the last few months, we have been doing streaming programs from artists around the country, and it has been a really lovely model. I will say, industrywide, I think something that is beautiful that did come out of this is just the partnerships between agents and promoters and venues. We have been lucky enough to be a part of these affiliate programs, where a portion of the tickets sold will support Kentucky Performing Arts. We have had everyone from The Blind Boys of Alabama holiday show, to Pink Martini, to Chevy Chase talking about Christmas Vacation, with a percentage of the proceeds coming to KPA. It’s been really exciting to be able to keep those lines of dialogue open, and we look forward to announcing more of those this spring.
We strive to partner with Louisville arts and community organizations in efforts to highlight their mission and really curate conversations, art exhibitions, and performances that speak to what they are doing and speak to what our city is going through. We partnered with groups like Louisville Urban League, and we highlighted their Polaroid Project, where youth students used Polaroid cameras to take pictures of things that represented the COVID pandemic and the social unrest in our city. We then highlighted those on the big screen in Christy’s Garden, and then we were going to screen Good Trouble, the John Lewis documentary. However, the weather did not allow us to do so. So, that’s really exciting, and we’re going to continue that work in the spring in Christy’s Garden.
I am also looking forward to different options to be able to utilize, not only our own outdoor space at Christy’s Garden and Paristown Hall, but other outdoor spaces. And again, I cannot stress enough how amazing it has been to, not only industrywide, but here locally — to partner with so many organizations during this time. Everyone has just been so supportive, I think, of each other, to be able to find ways to make things work and to provide opportunities, safe opportunities, for our community. It’s just been so inspiring.
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT There are many causes worthy of your support during this uncertain time. We invite you to consider a gift to Kentucky Performing Arts, so that we may continue to build lifelong relationships with the arts across the Commonwealth. Donate.
A LOUISVILLE LOVE
STORY
MATT AND TINA JO WALLACE
I
n Shakespeare’s As You Like It, he writes: “I like this place and could willing waste my time in it.” The thrust of the play tells the story of two young people, each far from home, who find each other — and in turn find love — surrounded by trees under a canopy of stars. For Orlando and Rosalind, that place was the Forest of Arden; for Matt and Tina Jo Wallace, it was Louisville’s Central Park, home of Kentucky Shakespeare.
Matt and Tina Jo met almost 20 years ago in May of 2001, both cast in Kentucky Shakespeare’s summer productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labours Lost — Tina Jo’s second stint with the company, Matt’s first. It didn’t take long for Matt to get Tina Jo’s attention.
“Second day of rehearsal,” says Tina Jo. “I didn't know that we would be partners, that we would get married and have two children — didn't know that. But we were doing monologue work and Matt was up the second day, and he was so ridiculous and hilarious and just so brave and so out there and so open and responsive — I was like, ‘I have to know this man.’ So I was done on Day Two. Now, it took him a lot longer.”
“Yeah. Like, three more days,” says Matt. “We were dating a week into the summer season. I’ve said this before, but I do not recommend that and I do not want my actors to start dating a week in. We have a show to do.” [Writer’s note: I also met my wife acting together during a summer season at Kentucky Shakespeare, Matt’s first as Producing Artistic Director.]
“It was like this lightning bolt, finding this person that you have this amazing connection with,” says Matt. “And I think a big part of our love story is that we fell in love with Louisville, we fell in love with Kentucky Shakespeare as we were falling in love with each other, so it's all very intertwined.” SHIFTING PRIORITIES
When the summer of 2001 ended, they knew they wanted their relationship to continue, but both returned home: Matt to Chicago and Tina Jo to Charlotte, N.C., where they’d each been living for about five years. They talked about where home might be for the next few months with Matt ultimately joining Tina Jo in Charlotte that Christmas.
“When I came back to Chicago after Kentucky Shakes, my priorities just shifted, and to me, it was more important to be with this person and not so much about the location,” says Matt.
Matt and Tina Jo in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001.
Tina Jo and Matt on their wedding day in 2004, photographed on the Kentucky Shakespeare stage in Central Park. Photo courtesy of Kentucky Shakespeare.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 2002
That’s a good thing because that location was about to change once more. Louisville, as it often does, brought the pair back just a short time later. More specifically, Kentucky Shakespeare brought them back to do their two-actor education tour in the spring and cast them both in the summer season, playing the eponymous characters in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and again in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“I remember it took us a long time to find an apartment,” says Tina Jo, “because we wanted a six-month lease. We didn’t know we’d still be here. We thought we're either going back to Charlotte or we're going to Chicago. We were committed to not staying, which is so funny to me now.”
Again, Louisville had other plans. If falling in love with the city had been part of the Wallace’s courtship, then Louisville had clearly fallen equally in love with the Wallaces, as the jobs continued to fall into place. For an actor, consecutive contracts in the same region can feel like hitting the Powerball repeatedly on consecutive plays.
“I always said: as long as we keep getting work here in Louisville, we’ll stick around,” says Matt. SHARING A STAGE, SHARING A LIFE
True to his word, the work kept coming and that six-month lease was renewed. Following a brief stint at St. Croix Festival Theatre in Wisconsin, the two returned to Louisville once more in the spring of 2003, working at Derby Dinner Playhouse across the bridge in Clarksville, which kept them busy until the Kentucky Shakespeare season. This time, they would be cast opposite each other as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.
But before that summer, there would be much ado about something.
“I put a ring on layaway,” says Matt. “I was so poor that I literally was paying, I think, 20 bucks a month to keep the ring there. Didn't have a dime to our name, but we were happy.”
He says he started really plotting out his plan in January. He knew it had to be a surprise, and he knew it had to be someplace special. He nixed the idea of doing it after a Much Ado performance.
“I just knew I would be too nervous to go through a show, knowing the stakes,” says Matt. “We're not overly public people, and I didn't really want to share that with an audience. But it did start me thinking about how to do it, and I decided to do it on the Shakespeare stage.”
On Monday, March 24, 2003 — Mondays are frequently a day off in the theatre world — Matt asked Tina Jo to lunch at Buck’s Restaurant in Old Louisville and afterwards, he nonchalantly suggested the two take a stroll through Central Park and maybe they might wander by the stage. And there, where they had met, where they had fallen in love, where they had shared so much of themselves and their art with each other and so many audiences, trees swooning in the breeze — he proposed.
Tina Jo says the proposal — the day — was perfect.
“The thing that's special about that particular stage,” she says, “and one of the reasons that we connect so much — it wasn't just the stage or that we got to be actors — but the mission of Kentucky Shakespeare was something that we shared. We wanted to use what we love to do to serve as many people as we could. To help young people and make people happy and spread this joy of art. And Kentucky Shakespeare's stage in Central Park totally is that. That's what it is. And I think it’s that shared mission for what we want to do with our lives.”
She said “yes,” by the way. They were married a year later on March 27, 2004.
Much Ado About Nothing, 2003
THEIR ULTIMATE PRODUCTION
Since then, the two have willingly been wasting their time here in Louisville ever since. As a continuation of the theme of As You Like It in their love story, Matt and Tina Jo played Orlando and Rosalind in Kentucky Shakespeare’s production in 2006.
And as far as “wasting time,” the Wallaces have done anything but. Matt took the reins as Producing Artistic Director of
Kentucky Shakespeare in 2013, while Tina Jo is Director of Children’s Theatre & Performing Arts Academy at Derby Dinner Playhouse — both in leadership positions for the two companies that played key roles in bringing and keeping them here. Their daughters Elizabeth and Anna were born in 2005 and 2007, respectively. “They’re our ultimate production,” Matt says.
Both of them beam anytime their kids come up in conversation, and Tina Jo says it’s something she really appreciates about their decision to call Louisville home. “We're raising our daughters in a city that has so much to offer but still feels like a small town.” She says, “Them being here, and being successful and loving their schools and their city and these two theater companies — we made the right decision.”
“We have baby photos of Elizabeth in the audience when we were doing As You Like It,” says Matt. “They were there at the end of my first day in this position and they ran up on stage and Anna shouted, ‘Let slip the dogs of war!’ You know, that's home for them, and I can't wait to get back there with them again.” NO PLACE LIKE HOME
“We've always talked about the impact,” says Tina Jo. “In Chicago, you could have 10 people in the audience and be excited about that number. Here, we as a couple, spread over these two organizations, have been able to impact so many more. The number of students that have seen our work or who we've helped to give them some sort of art is just incredible. I don't know if that could have happened in any other city.”
“It's where we've always been happiest,” says Matt. “And coming up on 20 years now, this is the longest either of us have ever lived in one place, in one city, so that's a cool milestone. And I think about our relationship with Kentucky Shakespeare — it's crazy to blink, and it's 20 years that I've been working with this company.” When reflecting on those 20 years, there’s one word that sounds louder and louder: home. “Where we love is home,” wrote the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Wallaces exemplify that in every way, be it the love they found in the city they call home — the city that called them here and enticed them to stay — or the home they found in each other. In fact, “home” is the word inscribed inside their wedding rings.
“Because we found our home together,” says Matt. “Because that's what we found in each other and that's what we still have. And it's just effortless and wonderful to get to go through life together. Such a gift.”
Matt and Tina Jo's daughters Elizabeth and Anna, pictured with their parents' dedicated bench in Central Park. Matt and Tina Jo at the Shakespeare in Love Gala in 2020.
Photos courtesy of Kentucky Shakespeare.
