NYTW firings: continued
ecoTheater continues its coverage of the shocking firing of the entire production department at New York Theatre Workshop. Based on the open letter from the soon-to-be dismissed Production Manager, it seems the announcement about the action was mishandled:
“It is sad that an institution like the Workshop has devolved in such a way. I am angry, sad and more than a little bitter at the treatment the whole of production has been put through. What is even more enraging is that none of the individuals responsible for making this decision were present at our termination – Artistic Director Jim Nicola, Managing Director Billy Russo and Heather Randall. These were the people who, according to their messengers, were responsible for this decision. All of us in production are bearing the brunt of an organization which lacks the ability to enforce any thing resembling fiscal constraint with respects to the work that occurs here, as well as an organization which cannot effectively self govern its own desires. It is disgraceful that an institution such as the Workshop, with its mission and its presence within a community which prides itself on inclusion and diversity, would act in such a way as to cut off those very people which sustain it. Any pretense of progressive agendas with respect to issues of politics or social/cultural/artistic concerns should be discarded right now. This action is a clear indication of the lack of concern for those people who give their all to this institution and it insults those who believed in the Workshop as an example of an organization that could function as something resembling a family. Obviously that family doesn’t include us. I will miss many of you but not all of you.”
That’s pretty cowardly: not having the decency to tell the staff, or even the Production Manager himself, in person. They made (what anyone who understands theatre would agree to be) an incredibly drastic decision to cut the very department responsible for operating what they claim to be: a theatre. But yet couldn’t face those that actually made up the department? It is unprecedented for a production department of a theatre to be dismissed without the rest of the theatre also being closed. I cannot comprehend of a Managing Director or Artistic Director that was truly concerned for the well being of their theatre treating the production department as something to be outsourced.
Hudson & Gaines
