Jeffrey Mosser: Welcome to another episode of the From the Ground Up podcast, produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Jeffrey Mosser, recording from the ancestral homeland of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee, now known as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These episodes are shared digitally to the internet. Let’s take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technology, structure, and ways of thinking that we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the work we make leave a significant carbon footprint contributing to climate change that disproportionately affects indigenous people worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging the truth and violence perpetrated in the name of this country, as well as our shared responsibility to make good of this time and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship.
Dear artists, this episode is super important to me, since it feels like there has been a theme of festival culture and presenting work over the last few seasons. I’m thinking about Theatre X, I’m thinking about Urban Bush Women, in particular this and last season, where John and Jawole individually talked about taking theatre and performance elsewhere to be shared, but also for artists to grow at those locations, whether that’s climbing to the top of a volcano or meeting other artists while you’re at the festival. I, personally, believe that this cross-pollination is so vital and something we don’t get to take advantage of as often these days.
Today, we’re talking with Mary Roeder, Associate Director of Programming and Sara Billmann, Vice President of Marketing and Communication at the University Musical Society of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In January 2023, I had the great opportunity to see Are we not drawn onward to new erA by Ontroerend Goed, among other shows at the No Safety Net Festival. This was the show’s first stop after Under the Radar Festival, which got me thinking about the touring and festival circuit that ensembles somehow find their way onto, and not just ensembles, but in particular, international touring groups as well, which Ontroerend Goed is.
Speaking of, for more information on this group in particular, you can check out the last episode of last season, and I’ll put a link in the transcripts page for you all. I felt it was important for us to connect with an organization that actually programs this kind of work, so that we can gain insight into how this becomes a part of a sustainable practice for us, or perhaps even a lucrative practice for these touring groups. I’m always looking to build these connections about sustainability and institutionality, so if you’ve got yet another connection, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Hit me up at [email protected] or on Instagram at ftgu_pod or at ensemble_ethnographer. All right, folks. Please, please, please do. I want to know more. Okay, lots to connect and let’s get to it, you all. Please welcome, Mary and Sara, who Zoomed in on March 10, 2023 from Wyandot and Anishinaabe Milwaukee land, now known as Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here we go.
Sara Billmann: I actually grew up in Wisconsin, so I have a fondness for the Milwaukee area.
Jeffrey: Oh, great. Where in Wisconsin are you from?
Sara: Sheboygan Falls.
Jeffrey: Okay, great. I’m originally from Minnesota, so I feel I am still learning about all of the Wisconsin things, so that’s great to hear.
Sara: If you’ve had a fish fry and a double brat, you’re in good shape.
Jeffrey: Oh yeah, yeah. No, check those off the list pretty quickly. Yeah. Just as I continue to check some audio levels here, can you all each tell me, just a lightning round situational questions, can you all tell me your favorite salutation, how you greet the room when you walk into it?
Mary Roeder: Hey!
Sara: I’m usually pretty down to business, so I don’t usually greet people, I just start talking.
Jeffrey: That’s great. How about your favorite exclamation, something amazing happens and you exclaim?
Mary: I’m a potty mouth, so it usually involves the F word.
Jeffrey: Great. Great. Sara?
Mary: Sara can attest to that.
Sara: Dang.
Jeffrey: Dang. How about favorite mode of transportation?
Mary: I like a train, but they’re not particularly civilized in the US, so that’s usually if I’m on the continent.
Sara: Actually, it’s funny. I was going to say the same thing. I really love riding trains, but probably, I don’t do it as much as I’d like to, but walking.
Jeffrey: Sure. Right, right, right. Then, how about, what is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Sara: Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream.
Jeffrey: Awesome.
Mary: Probably mint chocolate chip.
Jeffrey: Yeah, awesome. That’s great. Mint chocolate chip is my go-to as well. Awesome. But I do love Americone Dream. I fell in love with it over the pandemic and I should have stopped, but I couldn’t stop. Well, first of all, thank you both for joining me today and taking time to talk about your process and how you choose what you choose for the No Safety Net programming and what happens at University Musical Society, and so I’m really glad to connect with you.
I came to see the production of Are we drawn on to new erA, and I had been following Ontroerend Goed’s work for a while now, and when they were finally coming back to the United States, I could finally see them, I was like, “Well, I could either go to the Walker and check it out in Minneapolis or go on to Ann Arbor and have an adventure and have a birthday weekend, which is really great. And so, I had a delightful time and I had a great time in Ann Arbor, so just have to say that out loud to you all.
The thrust of today, I just want to make sure that we’re talking about, how you find the work that you find, how you bring in that sort of programming, how you fund it and how you market it, and the big thrusts around that. I sent some questions along, I don’t know if you’ve got them, but they’re really just guiding questions. We may or may not get to all of them. It’s not important if we get to all of them. I’m sure that many of them one leads into the other, so I’m not worried about that. But yeah, I think what I’m really interested in doing, this podcast is really interested in doing, but first I’d love for us to start out by just saying what brought you to UMS in general? How did you get into the positions that you’re in presently?
Mary: You want to go first, Sara?
Sara: Sure. As I mentioned, I grew up in Wisconsin and came to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate student originally studying Oboe Performance, and I very quickly realized that I did not want to spend the rest of my life scraping little pieces of bamboo to make reeds and found myself in a work-study position at UMS in the marketing department. Did that for a couple of years, worked full-time, went off to graduate school in California, and then came back about twenty-five years ago now as the head of marketing and communications. It’s such a terrific organization, because as a multi-disciplinary presenter, there’s so much variety in each season and every year there’s something new to learn about and new to immerse yourself in. Many of us have actually been here for quite a long time, but every year still feels very fresh.
Jeffrey: Thank you. Mary?
Mary: I came to the University of Michigan for undergrad, and I studied cellular and molecular biology. I had a job working for University Productions, which is the producing arm of the University of Michigan School of Music Theater and Dance, so I just had a paid job doing lighting. I worked in the electric shop. Back in high school, I was a theatre techie and my first job was at a summer stock festival. It was only ever, for me, just like a paid gig on the side. It wasn’t until the senior year of college that I really even understood who UMS was, University Musical Society, and I actually took a course on Performing Arts Admin course with Sara’s husband, Jeffrey Karas, who heads University Productions.
I deferred medical school, I didn’t mention that part, I was on the medical school track. I begged for an internship. I basically fought my way in for an internship at UMS. Then, I got hired as a maternity cover in the education department, and that was fifteen, sixteen years ago. The last thing I’ll say is, I started in, what was it called under Ben, Sara? Education and Audience Development?
Sara: Yeah.
Mary: Then, I was in that department for maybe six, seven years, took on a dual role between the education and the programming departments, and then moved into programming full-time, again, gosh, I don’t even know, five, six years ago.
Jeffrey: Funny how our roads are winding no matter where it’s really great.
Mary: Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey: You mentioned, Sara, that UMS is a multi-disciplinary program, and so I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the program itself or both of you all, if you could talk a little bit more about what UMS strives to offer in terms of a season’s programming.
Sara: Absolutely. UMS was founded in 1879. We’re actually just about to conclude our 144th season, which is quite astonishing. It started off originally as a group of university and towns people who came together to sing choruses, and then they essentially hired an orchestra to accompany them on some choruses from Handel’s Messiah, and then they started bringing in more orchestras. The foundation of the organization was really largely classical music, western classical music-focused. It grew and grew and grew, and when Ken Fisher came in the late 1980s, that was when the programming really underwent a big transformation. Michael Kondziolka came on board at that point as the head of programming. We expanded beyond the western classical tradition and started doing jazz and traditions from throughout the world, not just western classical music, but music from the Arab world, music from Latin America, music from Asia and the subcontinent, and really started to expand that side.
In the mid-nineties, we added theatre to the portfolio. I would say, in the early nineties, we also added a dance commitment. Over the last thirty years or so, the programming portfolio has really expanded and now includes, again, pre-pandemic and we’re climbing back towards the regular size, but includes probably forty to fifty different events and about seventy or so performances each year. That takes place in multiple venues. We actually don’t have our own home. We present in anywhere from five to eight venues a year, most of which are in Ann Arbor and on the University of Michigan campus, but there are occasionally times where we go further afield to Detroit or Ypsilanti or other markets in the southeast Michigan region. The other thing that we added when Ken came on board was a big commitment to K-12 initially, and then that expanded into a much larger learning and engagement commitment, which you now see threaded throughout our entire season, and it’s really a core part of our programming efforts as well.
Mary: I think the one other thing folks are interested to learn about how UMS operates is that different than I think pretty much every other university-based presenter, we function as our own 501(c)(3). By nature of how long we’ve existed, we have a very strong affiliation with the University of Michigan, we’re a non-profit affiliate, but the University of Michigan functions as a donor to us. Our alignment with what happens in the academic calendar and classroom connections, curricular integration, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the outside. But when people hear that we don’t own any venues, we don’t have a regular home base that’s part of, we’re regular users of University of Michigan venues. We have preferred access, but we are renters in those spaces.
Jeffrey: Do those, you mentioned six to eight spaces or venues that you’re in when you do something on the university campus or so, is there a financial benefit to doing so? You say you rent from them, but do they rent at a different rate because you have such a storied history?
Sara: Yeah, yeah. We get lower rental rates than a commercial presenter would get as part of that relationship. There’s actually a whole set of guidelines that a lawyer from the law school put together, I think, back in the late seventies or early eighties that sets the guidelines for access to the venues and the priority and all of that. Every June, there’s a meeting of all of the major users where they spend hours sitting in a conference room, dividing up the calendar for the next year. Of course, some of it’s based on the academic calendar, because the students get top priority for their production, since it is a university setting. But Mary’s right. That independent relationship has really been key to UMS’ success over the last 144 years because we do our own programming completely independent from any university guidance or involvement. Of course, we try to partner for different projects and relationships and theme semesters and things of that nature, but it’s really a separate institution.
Jeffrey: How did you decide this past season?
Mary: I’ve been asked this question some version of this a million times and I still don’t have an efficient answer. It happens any number of ways and the time scale for all of that happens drastically different, whether you’re looking at the kind of classical music. Chamber series, recitalist, time horizon, those things tend to come together a year or two years, sometimes three years out. When the Berlin Philharmonic tours to the United States, they go to two or three places and we tend to know very far in advance, like several years, when that’s going to be. That’s a kind of extreme version. Or, if we know there’s a very large theatre project, something flashy that’s coming together, we might know very far in advance and we are able to protect that time on the season.
With theatre and dance, we announce our season in what? Three, four weeks, Sara? And I think we’ve got one, maybe two things that we’re still trying to figure it out. The time horizon just gets smaller and smaller when it comes for the more theatrical presentations. An organization as long as UMS, we have longstanding relationships with all kinds of artists over their full careers, so a lot of artists, them coming to UMS is part of a longer trajectory of supporting them over their careers. Audience favorites, sometimes there are recommendations from folks at the university, folks in the community, agents we trust. Sometimes I or others have seen a project somewhere we’d never heard of the group before and we just get really excited and we follow our curatorial bliss and we’re just like, “We got to make this happen.” Even if it goes nowhere else, it happens in all kinds of ways. I don’t know. Sara, what is your perspective?
We’re telling a narrative and telling a story throughout the season of where the arts world is going and how we can be part of that.
Sara: There are a lot of different factors that lead into it, and frankly, some of that is also just pure logistics. We typically present in alignment with the academic calendar because we want to make sure that what we do is accessible to students, so right there, that puts us in September to late April. If some group is touring in May, we usually take a pass on it, because we just don’t have the same basis of audience members here. Sometimes we simply, we have a great idea and a tour is offered to us and there’s one date that’s available and we cannot get the venue, and so we have to take a pass on it or do the horse trading in the background to try to swap with somebody, which sometimes we can do and sometimes we can’t.
But it’s really thinking about the whole portfolio of programs and making sure that we are also putting together a robust series of Western classical music in Hill Auditorium, a robust series of chamber music in Rackham Auditorium. Several dance and theatre events across the various venues that we have, jazz, all of that. We’re really trying to look at individual projects, but then also take a look at how it all fits together for the whole season, so that we’re telling a narrative and telling a story throughout the season of where the arts world is going and how we can be part of that.
Jeffrey: You mentioned that sometimes tours come and reach out to you first to say, “Hey, we’re coming.” Is that pretty typical for music and other performance acts or is it just mostly one genre or another?
Mary: This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but I would say our music programming tends to be part of tours more often than the theatrical forms. On occasion, if it’s a really big international theatre or dance project, it would be impossible to consider a project if it wasn’t part of a tour. Just the tour overhead freight, things like what it costs to actually get the show to North America could be a factor. Dance and theatre, I think it used to tend to be more that way. I haven’t gotten to talk to colleagues in the field about this, but I get a sense that the kind of touring networks of dance and theatre have started to dissolve a little bit. There just aren’t as many projects coming. There’s enough of a aesthetic and curatorial point of view that is unique to each place that the same projects aren’t always necessarily the most, they’re not the highest priority for every presenter that might be naturally part of the tour, and I think there’s actually a lot of room for improvement on that front moving forward.
Sara: I was just going to add too, that oftentimes, it’s not specific artists or specific tours reaching out, but it’s also us working with, not other university partners, but other arts partners generally, and working with BAM or working with the Kennedy Center or working with the Barbican to put these projects together where there are multiple people interested. We also commission new work. Next year, in fact, there’s a new string quartet that the Takács Quartet is performing that UMS was one of many commissioners on. We’re working with a lot of other arts partners, not just artists and managers in thinking about how some of these things come together as well.
Jeffrey: I expected there to be some sort of university circuit versus a theatrical arts presenting circuit of sorts, just thinking of Ontroerend Goed as an example where they did sort of both. They went to BAM, then they came to you all, and then they went to the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, and then they went to Ontario. You’re in this unique place being a non… you’re affiliated with the university, but you’re not. You’ve got this really great independent ability from what I understand, and then you’re working with other arts organizations to curate and bring them in. Can you talk to me a little bit more about the arts partnerships that you have with other outside presenters?
Mary: There’s an organization called or a sort of loose affiliation, I don’t know. Will you tell me what word would be most appropriate? The acronym is MUPs, Major University Presenters.
Sara: Let’s just say that the marketing people did not come up with that name.
Mary: No, it’s interesting. This is sort of a coalition of university-based presenters.
Sara: All housed at major research universities.
Mary: My perspective on this is probably less precise, because in the heyday of the convenings of MUPs organizations, I wasn’t as closely looped into the programming decisions being made. My sense is that that kind of touring network or part of the genesis of that group meeting regularly was to support this kind of touring network across universities. But there were also, the CFOs would meet, the learning and engagement teams would meet, and there was just a lot of shared learning that would happen in those. Beyond a few big orchestra tours and things like that, I don’t get the sense that those touring networks for theatrical works have been particularly robust. But Sara, you… that’s not a criticism, it’s just.
Sara: I would actually backtrack a little bit with MUPs. I think the genesis behind the group when it first started in the early 2000s was really focused more on the connection to the university community and trying to figure out how we integrate the arts into the university experience for students and largely focused on students. But we also found ourselves with a lot of common issues related to fundraising, related to marketing, related to the geography, because most of these major universities are not in major metropolitan areas. I would say, it was less designed as a touring network and more designed as almost like a support group for lack of a better word, because many of us were sharing similar issues, but we were in different markets, so we weren’t competitive with each other in that way. It subsequently turned out that within the MUPs group, some people have their own venues and some people are renting venues, so right there, that creates its own set of complications.
There were some presenters who are doing a lot of Broadway tours and some who don’t have a space for Broadway. Again, that’s another distinguishing factor. For UMS, there are probably three to five other MUPs groups that do similar programming to what we do. Sometimes the tours overlap, quite frankly, often they don’t, mainly because geography gets in the way. There’s always some overlap every year of artists, but it’s not a group that’s going to an artist and saying, “We’ve got six places where you can perform and put together a tour.” That kind of programming coordination doesn’t really happen in that way, but there may be individual projects with individual university partners that work together.
Mary: With that said, on occasion there’s a project that we might be really excited about, and as a courtesy to the artists or just as like a hey, a courtesy to other folks in the US, we’re letting people know that we’re making a commitment to an artist, and if they’re interested in jumping on board, they’re going to be there. It’s not everybody’s interest to share travel costs and visa costs and all of that. Sometimes it works out, but I do find myself more and more regularly trying to give people a heads-up and also just calling my counterparts at other places to find out what they’re really excited about and what plans they have in particular for international artists.
Jeffrey: I understand that sometimes the university situation is sometimes can be easier, but I can also understand how it might be harder. Can you talk about how you navigate that world of bringing in international artists?
Mary: We just do whatever we want. It’s the short answer with the rare exception when there might be some sensitive content embedded in whatever the show is. If we’ve got the resources and the time and the wherewithal to make a commitment to bringing an artist from the furthest flung region of the world, we just do it and there’s a lot of enthusiasm. There’s an expert on everything at the University of Michigan, so someone is always very excited.
Jeffrey: You say it’s a logistics game of who’s coming when. Can you talk a little bit about how it might be a financial game? How do you budget your year for, we have this amount for international artists and this amount for this festival and this amount for XYZ?
Sara: We, a number of years ago, I want to say one other thing about the relationship with the university as it relates to international artists, which is that we also have access to great university resources like the general counsel’s office and being able to work with groups like that for legal and contract review or if we need an assist on visas, there are people here that we can use to work with that, which Mary’s been highly-involved in on many of the international artists. But with respect to financial benchmarking, a number of years ago, we set up rough guidelines for each thread of programming that we do in terms of essentially how much we could afford to lose on each, because let’s be honest, nobody’s making money off of performing arts tours.
Over the years, that’s evolved somewhat from looking at programmatic threads to looking at individual venues where we regularly present. We do set those benchmarks every year for how that’s going to fit into our budget and what we can support, then work very closely with the development office, which has a multi-pronged approach to reaching sponsors and soliciting sponsorships for these programs. A lot of those are individual sponsors who want their names affiliated with supporting a particular artist or a particular type of event. We certainly have corporate sponsors, foundations and grants, and that’s a big puzzle piece.
When we kick off our season next month, week after we kick it off, we have an insider’s look for donors and the whole goal of that evening is to help people become more familiar with the artists on stage, so they can figure out what they would like to support or have their name associated with. For instance, in the case of No Safety Net, we actually had a huge array of sponsors for that work. Some of them were individuals. There was one donor, who has been involved with UMS for quite a number of years, who made an anonymous gift to support programming that was focused on environmental issues. This year’s with a No Safety Net festival between Are we not drawn onward with new erA and Plastic Bag Store, we had a couple of things that really fit the bill there.
We also worked with a lot of university units, some of which provided financial support, because they saw the benefit to their students and their faculty to get involved, and some of which were there more as promotional and content partners. We actually had, the University of Michigan Credit Union made a first corporate endowment gift a number of years ago, and so they put some of that endowment earnings towards the No Safety Net Festival. We’ve had in-kind gifts from, in the case of Plastic Bag Store, there was a real estate company in town that donated the space and that was an in-kind gift that made it possible for us to present that work. Some of it is endowment building and individually-focused and some of it is working with individual university units and some of it is more on the corporate side, but it’s all a puzzle piece and balancing act.
As the marketing person, it certainly seems that there are some events that everybody gets really excited about and we have a gazillion sponsors for them. Then, there may be other events that people just aren’t as familiar with and don’t feel as comfortable with that. In the end, it all balances. We’re looking at the season at a whole not at individual projects or programs, because same thing with ticket sales, if we do really, really well on one thing, it can offset not doing as well on another event, and so we have to think about it as a season.