Interview with Steve Bailey, executive director, and Sterling Houston, artistic director, both company members

By Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy: You were there first, so I’ll start with you. Just talk about some of the early genesis stuff. What year was it? Who was it? What motivated you to start a group?

Steve Bailey: It started in 1985. I went to Peru and did a cultural exchange. I saw the incredible work they were doing with very little resources and without compromising about what they were doing — not having to do certain things because that would make money, or not do certain things because of an audience. The lack of compromising really struck me, with little resources. So, I came back and called up — I remember it well, but I don’t know if Sandy does. Sandy lives in Austin, but she is still a company member. She was a choreographer and dancer, she worked with a dance company and I was working with a theater company at the time. I called her up and said let’s do something together, and she said okay. We were both kind of tired of our separateness. We got a bunch of people together in my living room and just started talking about what we would do if we had a company that could do original work, that was more experimental or more kind of pushing some boundaries. We weren’t going to be about making money but about making work. That was really the genesis.

KH: How long did it take for you to have a vision that also would include a multicultural project, an education project?

SB: I guess it has evolved all the way along. I think my politics has always been from the beginning to do things like that, but I learned more as I went along. Sterling’s influence, The Esperanza Center and other friends like that around me pulling me as a white man towards—

KH: And at what point did they get involved?

SB: Sterling and I did a piece together before Jump-Start even started. 1984 or ’83. Then I invited Sterling to be a part of a piece in about ’87. Then from then on he was involved.

Sterling Houston: This may seem strange — I don’t even know if Steve really knows this — when I came back here, I had really decided not to do art. I came back here to work in my mother’s travel agency, to be an adult and buy a house, to settle down. This was in ’81. But since ’77 I had worked in the Magic Theater in San Francisco as a techie and a couple of different things. The first show that we did at Fort Mason was Sam Shepard’s "Inacoma," which I worked on. Within a year Sam won a Pulitzer Prize and things started taking off. I thought, well, I’m not going to do any better than this. This is the end of my theater career. This is a cool way to close up. Now I have to grow up and make money, I was 30-whatever. I was always getting called to come home so I did. As I said, it was after the Milk assassination and Jonestown. I was over San Francisco, so the timing was right to come home.

Naturally those impulses to do work die hard, so I would get into little things here and there and do plays, community theater stuff. I had heard about Steve’s stuff at 24th Street, because it just stood out. He was doing all these wild and wooly things, experimental. So, this sounded familiar. Territory I already knew. And I thought I would audition for "Medea." I was classically trained, I had always wanted to do "Medea." I didn’t know that Steve had deconstructed it and it was all wild and didn’t refer hardly at all to the original text. So, that was my first foray into working that way. Steve was working through a process where we invented scenes based on suggestions, ideas We knew who our characters were, but pretty much it was all constructed out of improv and various things that were set up. It seemed like the process went on for a year. It seemed like it was months and months and months of scene development. It was always very interesting, very engaging. Then we did the show. We had to stop and make a decision about what it was going to be. Steve made the decisions about "this scene is going to follow this." We did the show and it ran. The show was very interesting and fun to do. It was not nearly as fun as the process getting to the show. Or as exciting to me. That was my experience with that.

It seems like years went by and I would hear that Steve was doing stuff. I continued to do other things, mainly as an actor. I went to see "MacBeth in Flames," that is when I remember seeing you, I went that show at this club. It was this really wonderful performance. Very fun, very hip, beautiful costumes. The three witches were like the Supremes. It was very cool. Then I was a little bit hurt, like why didn’t you call me? I would have been perfect for this. I would love to be a part of this. He remembered that, I guess. So, the next time they did something, which was the seminal, the first version of ideas for "It’s About Going," was a film. He called me for that, so I did the film. The show started to evolve as a play. He wanted to do all these things as a play.

At that point we were in Blue Star in our first home. Blue Star then was a wreck. It was just a derelict slum. It had electricity, but it was just like, nothing. Nothing. Just this raw space. We did that show there. Part of that show, Steve had each person do their own solo. We had to write our solos. We did similar stuff like that at 24th Street with "Medea," but somehow with this we had a lot of freedom to create our solo. The writing itself had evolved, went through a process. My memory of it is, although Steve has a different memory — oh, and I am a singer, so I was hired to sing. I had this great singing solo in the piece. My memory is that my solo was quite strong and Steve really encouraged me to write. I didn’t really consider myself a writer per se, although I was in the process of writing a full-length, Broadway scale musical. I was starting to really explore that. But I really didn’t think I was a writer formally, although I had written a lot of songs. Based on that monologue, I started to hear myself as a writer and let ideas come through that I had formerly suppressed before. To formally work things. Steve had the presence of mind to say, "We can do your play, the play that you are working on," which was this thing about Madame T.J. Walker’s daughter, very elaborate. I said, It’s not really for Jump-Start, the scale is all weird and nahnahnah, but," I said, "I do have this other idea I’m working on." That was a piece called "A Brief History of American Song." Steve never asked to see anything, just, oh, okay let’s do that. I don’t know where we got the money.

We co-produced with 24th Street. The fire marshal shut our space down. We took a space right across from the Alamo, appropriately enough. Second floor, that wasn’t really a theater, but it kind of was. Just a flat stage and some raked seating. Did the show there. It was my first play, and it was a big hit. I think very successful artistically. It was three vignettes looking at the exploitation of African-American artists by the white structure, by the "establishment" in three eras of black musical history. It was just a surprise hit. We extended it. Maya Angelou came to the show and she loved it. She was in tears after the thing. She struck up a friendship with me, she was here doing a residency. That really kind of pushed my wheel. She kind of scolded me and forced me to take myself seriously as a writer.

There’s been no looking back. Once that happened the flood gates opened and I just started doing work, work, work, work, work. I do three or four plays a year. Jump-Start produced all of them. For the most part, I would do two shows a year and some small things. Year after year, they all cranked out. Suddenly you’ve got 15 or 20 plays, with varying amounts of success. Some things were very successful artistically and not so successful commercially. Some were the opposite. Some were just great ideas that never really gelled structurally. But all the while, I am evolving as a writer.

Then in ’91, I met Arnie Aprill, who was here working on the San Antonio Festival. He is the assistant director on "The Magic Flute." He had a grant to look at multicultural theater, so he came to Jump-Start to see some work and met me. We fell in love with each other and started collaborating. The first play we did together was called "Womandango," which was this race-and-sex-reversed piece set in Antebellum South that really satirized black stereotypes that are used in film. It was many things, but that is basically what it was. It wasn’t about slavery, but it had slavery in it. It had whites playing the slaves, and blacks playing the masters, and women playing the men. It sounds like a handful, but it was quite accessible after five minutes of you being shocked. Then you just accepted it because the roles are so defined and the clichés were explored so thoroughly. That was a success. It won a national award. We went to Chicago and we did it in Chicago. It was a disaster. The press hated it. The black intellectuals wanted to string me up. They didn’t see beyond the six-foot-tall black man in a pink hoop skirt. Man of color in a big pink dress. They couldn’t see the ideas beyond that. They stopped right there. Paul Carter Harrison, who is a black intellectual playwright and theorist, said that I had set back black theater by 50 years. Things that you just don’t forget. There was some proper understanding of it, but very little. I came out of the ridiculous aesthetic in New York. So, I was in John Loveland’s first play, which was "Big Hotel." And then his second play, which had two titles "When Queens Collide" and "Conquest of the Universe." I was in "Conquest of the Universe" after the big split. So, I had this kind of background in doing things that seemed to be one thing and were really another. It was really easy for me. I had the ability to be funny on stage, to really be satirical and take pop things and blow them up. It was like this really rich growth for me for like the first five, and suddenly it was ten years.

KH: Let me go back here for a minute and get something, what is 24th Street?

SB: It was a theater company that we founded at the local university here with a man named Rick Slocom. I founded it when I was 21 years old. We had done summer production there of a couple of things, and he wanted some help, but he also wanted to involve community people.

KH: So, did 24th Street continue on as Jump-Start?

SB: Well, 24th Street continued on after I left. Sterling did a lot of work there, and other people have, too. Even I did lighting design and stuff like that. Jump-Start was an off-shoot of it, I would say. Many of the people that were with 24th Street, a lot of the people that had been there that were loyal — oh, I guess it wasn’t about being loyal, but they were loyal to me, went to Jump-Start. The people who were more interested in creating new work.

SH: And it was much freer to be with Jump-Start, although 24th Street was the most progressive thing going stylistically and the things they choose to do. They didn’t do that much original work other than Steve’s. They were doing very obscure Polish playwrights, and stuff like that.

SB: Contemporary work.

SH: Yeah, contemporary work, but European for the most part. But some of it wasn’t. They did "The Fifth Son" for example.

SB: Contemporary theater , but published and scripted.

KH: One of the things that for me is interesting about Jump-Start is that there are multiple sources for the work that is done. We talked a little bit about this before. There really is an eclecticism in terms of the work that is produced, because you will produce the work of anybody that is in the company. I would like to hear a little bit about the origins of the work. Less about the aesthetic origins of the work, but how do you decide what you are going to make. How do you decide what to support?

SH: You follow your impulses and instincts. If something is pushing you, then you have a place to do that. If it gets to the point where it starts to come out, it isn’t just a general idea – it is really starting to pump you — you have a place to do that. Two points. Originally, people worked with Jump-Start because they wanted to work with Steve. They wanted to be a part of the work that Steve was doing, which allowed a lot of freedom for the actors. It was a certain approach which involved music, mixed-media, dance all these elements that just were not happening for us anywhere else. It allowed you to be really creative. It was fucking fun. It was really joyous. It was really great to perform this stuff. If you didn’t have an audience, at least you had each other and we all knew what it was.

SB: Sometimes we didn’t have an audience.

SH: That only happened a few times, but it was memorable. The impulse that everyone had that was common, and yes it did evolve and become very eclectic and very specific to the artist, but we were all there because Steve wanted to do certain kinds of work and was doing it. A change happened when Steve decided that he didn’t want to do that anymore. He had gotten to the end of that and felt like he wanted to do some other kinds of work which he did do. And he did them with people who weren’t in the company, necessarily. Sometimes they were. Also, it became a way to get more people in the company with other skills and other gifts. Paul, for example, came to work as a dancer, as I had come to work as an actor. We evolved into what we are now through those associations. Michael Verdi came as a dancer. Who knew he was a brilliant video artist? That all evolved. And again, it goes back to Steve not only allowed it but pushed us, like you would be dumb not to take advantage of this. You have this total window to do what you want to do.

SB: You heard this last night. People say they want to do this, and I go "Okay then do it". But I will get out the calendar and say, okay, you want the second two weeks in November? It gives people a deadline and they have to get something done. It’s not like I fuck with that. I don’t think I make people. I don’t imprint things. It’s not like I am this artistic guru, nurturing people. I get out a calendar and say, "Okay, when are you going to do it?"

KH: Did you also go "Here’s money"?

SB: Yeah. Here’s support. Now the money may not be tremendous, and was not tremendous and is not tremendous. The way we are structured now, company members can do work. That also means they get space, time, administrative support and a little bit of money. That is part of your commitment as a company member. You have the right to do that. So, not everyone takes advantage of that all the time. That annual retreat we have, that is usually when things fall out. Either for that coming season or for the years to come. That is where a lot of dialogue happens about what people are interested in. We may say this might not work for this season, but can you think about it for next season. There has to be negotiation through all these ideas. Particularly into the finality of a production, because we can’t do everything all at once. We’ve never turned anyone down. Company members aren’t allowed to be turned down, but we make it work. Even if we find we have to postpone it a year.

KH: I think the longer an organization stays together, the more real a promise is even if it is two years away. It sounds like you both had political agendas behind your work, and community identity stuff. Whether it was coming out of an identity-politic kind of thing and how you brought that to your theater . Whether it was about being black, or about being gay, or anything else like that. Or even, what it was like to start noticing how Mexican San Antonio is? I would love to hear different places where you realized that you were creating a multicultural project or that the work you were doing was really rooted in these different kinds of communities. At what point did any language like that occur to you?

SB: You know what I am thinking about, don’t you?

SH: That board meeting?

SB: I am thinking of that meeting in Chuck’s living room.

SH: That is what I am talking about.

SB: We should talk about this. That was a seminal point in our effort. This was a fight with some white people. What is your memory of it?

SH: This had to be ‘89-’90...

SB: Somewhere like that. We were probably five years into the process. We realized that what started as a white, experimental company that was still dealing with issues and still had a politic, but really primarily about: 1. the contemporary aesthetic, 2.content, switched to a — well, we were still a majority of white, but a lot of people of color that had a different kind of politic whose content was not more important, but was equally important to the form that they were using. That was influencing me. I was a volunteer staff. Then we had a little bit of money and Sterling came on. So, Sterling and I sat in the same office every day for a long time and had a lot of dialogue. Sterling had an enormous amount of influence on me. Not just telling me how things ought to be, but helping out loud to formulate. Helping to shape. He was someone to bounce off of. I remember long dialogues about issues and things. For me, by the time this meeting happened—

SH: It was impressive to me. I was a little fearful. I was fearful that everyone was going to walk out.

SB: What was our agenda for that meeting?

SH: It was new members. It was new company members. Steve made the "outlandish" statement that, yes, we were going to get new members to the company, but they had to be people of color. Because we had enough white people. People of color bring something to the mix that white people can never bring, and that is the experience of having lived in that skin. What that can do to make the whole company more resonate and more full, the vision more complete. All the usual comments were made like: "No, we just have to bring the most talented person in. What if the most talented person happens to be white?" Steve says, well, we won’t bring them in. It was shocking. I thought they were going to kill him, or all just walk out. No one walked out. There were some heated discussions. Only one person left the company, although she had other reasons for leaving. She was one of the ones that argued very strong that this was a very wrong approach. Racially specific agenda was just inherently wrong, and was reverse discrimination against whites. It does make you think it through. Is that really true? But Steve was very sure, and very steadfast that this was the right way to go. Of course, the people of color that came into the company, it did make a big difference. In a way it was symbolic. It changed the whole company. Nobody is typically Mexican, or typically black. That is a myth. My work never fit with any black company at all. It fit more with Jump-Start, because it was so wide open. It fit what I wanted to do.

SB: I don’t think I was conscious of this, but I knew I had power with these white people, if they followed me, to do my work. I had the power to change and make the company as I believed was right. If that wasn’t acceptable to them, I was willing to accept the consequences of one of them leaving. One of the wonders of Jump-Start is there are several members who I really feel have grown through the process. Now, I don’t think they have changed, radically changed politically, but I really think they get that idea that was brought up then that certain people because of their background can bring certain resources to you that you can’t just because you don’t have that background. Just that kind of basic principle that diversity is part of talent. It is part of nature, and what we do.

KH: Or even strength.

SB: Yes, strength thank you. Or even people that are good artists, I think are convinced of that.

SH: Yeah, well, the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in that we started to grow exponentially after that. Practically, there is more funding. You can get funded. That is a practical consideration. Yes, you want to be doing stuff that is worthwhile. It just so happens that they get it. The NEA, and so forth...

SB: That was in the same period when we were making that transition where everyone couldn’t do everything. We had done our first three or four years where everyone was involved in every piece. We were making one work a year, or one major work and one minor work. Everyone, if they wanted to, could be involved in everything. We came to a point where we got our own space, where things started happening, where a lot of people were doing other work and you couldn’t be involved in everything. I remember specifically that happening with Kim. she didn’t say anything about the piece and all its permutations. I finally said Kim what do you think about this piece, what is going on? Why have you said nothing? I don’t feel supported by you in this piece at all. She goes, "It isn’t about me. It isn’t affecting me. It is lovely. I think it is an incredible piece of work, but I wasn’t included in it." I said, "You are not going to be included in everything from now on, it can’t happen. This was a piece about gay men, it was all male. You are not going to be a part of this." We had this real intense conversation about inclusion, noninclusion, how much you can do, how much you can’t do. It ended up well. Until I confronted her I was really hurt by this original company member who had supported all along, and I felt really alienated, like she hated the work. She didn’t hate the work. She hated not being included in it. Now we still wrestle with that. The original company members want to do group work. Sandy and I are doing a piece which is kind of to celebrate our 15th anniversary. We haven’t done a piece together in a long time. We are creating a new piece that is going to happen in May.

KH: There has been some conversations about leadership. I have already spoken with people, like Nita, who really see it as Steve Bailey and the company, and when she talks about you she talks about Steve really gives power, not gives power but empowers, these people to do their own work. She really sees that you, more than anyone else, are the one who has set up the container for the work that is going on. Then, I have talked with other people that talk about the two of you as this duo, you know Steve and Sterling..

SB: But do you see the pattern there? People that are newer to the company — because I was solely the leader at first and really seen as "Mr. Jump-Start". I can’t tell you how many times people have said that to me.

KH: I’ll say that what I saw is that even how offices are structured says a lot. There are a lot of people that get to a point in an organization where you are and you guys would have more privatized spaces in the office. You still basically have one office room, and it is still a real open structure, no matter who owns this desk or that computer. The structure is really open and accessible and people face to the center instead of facing away. I would love to talk with you guys about how you see the evolution of leadership in the company and also how you see the future in terms of that.

SH: I am more comfortable giving an analysis of the way things are. The future is very hard for me to know. I never know with my health situation what is going to realistically be there for me. I can maybe plan six months at a time. That is okay, I am not trying to be a big martyr. It is just a reality. So, I don’t know. I always when we are planning. There is always something in the back of my mind going: Don’t depend on me two years down the line. I may not be able to do this. We are doing this five-year plan for the capital campaign. I may be totally demented by then, totally incapable of doing something that is helpful. I try to do that as much as possible. We are both— I am ten years older than Steve at least. We both get fatigued. I get very focused and work very hard on whatever the project or two or three is. It is wearing. I’ve tried to make a way in the last couple of years to take some time for myself. This is another lesson I have learned from Steve. He does that, too. He totally can detach. It is nothing for him to go to Mexico for a month and do nothing Jump-Start. Just read and eat and hang out, shop. It is renewing. I take little snatches of time here and there and try to do that for myself. This last year has been very hard to do that, because of things we are going through, I think Steve is really skilled at making a meeting happen, organizing, delegating, making sure it all gets covered. I see my power is through Steve. I will talk with him for 15 or 20 minutes and then he will incorporate what I have said. I don’t have to go.

SB: You say that isn’t your style. We do Critical Response as a way to evaluate staff. We do a group staff evaluation and we use the Critical Response process.

KH: How often do you do that?

SB: Now we are doing once a year for staff. The thing I remember as the only negative thing about your evaluation was that you don’t speak up enough. People were saying, "We want Sterling to speak up his opinions," and you said that sometimes that is just the way you are.

SH: It is easy for me to tell you over lunch, by the way such and such. Steve can really hear it and decide yea or nay and then act on it. It has a better shot of getting really done. I tend to be too tolerant. All the craziness, all the peoples’ specific little feuds, they are inevitable. I am very tolerant and patient, usually, with that. It is just part of it. It isn’t exactly good cop/bad cop, but it is on that order. A lot of the junior staff will think they can go through me because I am softer, I am easier to deal with. Steve will do it with me. If you say something that he hasn’t thought of or thought through, he’ll say no. But he always says no, but is still listening. If you are still making the argument, lo and behold, a half-hour later, or a day later, he’ll say yes. I can work through that. They don’t know that you hear that. Sometimes, there isn’t, always. I do respect that somebody has got to be that person. It doesn’t work. It is not a democracy. Everybody is not equal in that sense. I have seen messy — when they are trying to force that. I don’t want everybody to be equal in my organization. It does not work that way. They have a say and they are taken seriously. If you are repeatedly being told no, then you need to look at that.

SB: You heard that the other day. People do feel like they have a say. Felice made me cry the other day at that meeting.

SH: Why?

KH: Well, she was just talking about, here you can follow your dreams.

SB: I have never heard her say that. I have heard other people say that, but never Felice sit there and articulate that. I never thought that Felice thought that way. I never thought that was part of her core experience of being at Jump-Start.

KH: I am getting that. I have interviewed more of the younger company members. That message is coming home. Yes, you really can do what you want. I am really impressed at how inspired — and I think that is actually a better word than empowered — but how inspired the apprentice people are. They are going, "Yeah, I do what everyone tells me. I clean bathrooms and all this, but if I really said that I hated cleaning bathrooms they wouldn't make me. And I also get to originate new projects." Each of the two apprentices have been able to name something that they actually want to do and within a year are doing it. That is really far out.

SB: One of the things I want to add onto Sterling is: I think it funny, ’cause I always think of Sterling as the philosopher. I think the kind of philosophical underpinning in me is practical. I think we share both. We aren’t lacking in either, but those are the kind of roles we take. I’ll never forget that you did that thing about, "Oh, I hate having to be the one to do this—" and you called me and said that I needed to own my leadership. Don’t deny it, just because you feel like there is some kind of power inequity. Sometimes leadership is the way to give people more power not less power. I will never forget that conversation, because you made me go, okay, stop the eternal hit myself against the wall thing about leadership. It is the difference between tyranny and leadership. I don’t think I am a tyrant, although I can be tyrannical sometimes. There is a difference. I am not immovable. I soften quickly.

KH: This is another thing about structure. "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." I don’t know if you know that? It was a paper written. People were looking at the circle as the primary organizing model. The tyranny of structurelessness is where you refuse to create structure because it is based on the assumption that structure is inherently unfair or patriarchal. What you notice is that in the lack of structure it is very easy for certain people to take advantage of it. And then you will also notice that they maintain the structurelessness because it gives them power. One of the things that I see at Jump-Start is that there is a dare to actually make a structure. There is staff, there are resources, there is space, you have to maintain a building. These things you can’t pull off if you are all equal all the time. You wouldn’t have gotten there. Within that structure, it is built-in that there is inclusivity, an openness, a constant drive to find new voices.

SB: Have you ever seen our organizational model? It is funny that you said circles... The only thing that we can ever come up with is concentric circles. There is a structure though because we say that in the middle of the circles is the company. That is the core. That is the primary decision-making model. That is the primary need to be taken care of, the company.

KH: Is the second circle the board?

SB: The board, I think. Maybe staff second. Yeah, staff, then board. Then associate artists and community. Then larger community. It kind of goes out into these circles and everyone in the inner one is also included in the outer one. Even though it is circular in structure, we still say this is more important.

KH: I think the tricky thing about it is that you could make a 3-D model of it that would be conical and you would recognize a hierarchical structure to it. To me that is often symbolized by a triangle within a circle because a hierarchical structure within a circle, that really appreciates the divine voice of everyone within the circle, is not necessarily evident when you see a triangle. You’ve got the slaves-holding-up-the-king kind of thing. If there is a basic circle that encompasses the whole thing, which is mutual respect for all beings, everyone has a voice, everyone has the possibility of being an artist and to get their story out; hierarchy within that just has a different possibility of surviving.

I want to jump into community partnerships, what you do beyond the theater, and what you do to bring groups into the theater. This dynamic that you have that definitely seems like a transition from the pieces Jump-Start made in the beginning, which were more about "we are artists, we make pieces, whoever comes, comes." Where you started caring more about who comes and who you contact. Anything you want to say about these community partnerships.

SB: I think being around Sterling on a daily basis is one thing. And also being involved in Esperanza, I have to acknowledge that. Becoming really involved in a highly politicized activist community. Activism translating particularly around AIDS.

KH: Can you just say what Esperanza is?

SB: The Esperanza Center is a cultural center and activist center that is about the integration of oppressions. It is about all the issues at once, it is not specific...deals with racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism — all the isms all together. It really makes at its core that none of us are free until all of us are free. It is run by women, mostly women of color and lesbian women of color. Out of that came an activist community, but the arts were at the core of it. I was real active in the early ’90’s with AIDS and queer politics, along with feminism and other politics, too, that weren’t all directly art-related. There were a lot of meetings, a lot of actions. For me that was an idea that I always had a politic in my work, but there were other communities that could be pulled in, and how we would approach those communities. There is a broad spectrum of things we are dealing with now that deal with those communities. I think we deal with very different communities. Like Sterling is with, has helped found and really worked hard on this San Antonio Theater Coalition. That is not us, it is outside of our little circle. He has really pushed that and been one of the real leaders in that and made it this coalition that has really affected theater groups in a way that it wouldn’t have happened at all in this town.

SH: Because San Antonio has a tradition...the African-American community here, although it is a very small population — my brother and I talk about this. We can’t really figure out why it is so that for a community that has never had more than 8% black population, incredible things were accomplished here and continue to be by a very small group of people. We are used to taking the attitude of Atlanta or Houston as being more in the neighborhood, which has more than 15-20% black population. We are taken seriously here. Things like the Carver Center, which came out of self-help. It came out of African Americans not having a place to meet in the ’20’s. They formed this big building with donations. Then they started to get support. They got Carnegie to open a library in it. In 1929 it opened as the Carver Library and Auditorium, which is where, during segregation, the black artists would play for the black audience while they played somewhere else for the white audiences. People like Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, etc. That evolved. It nearly died with integration. In the ’70’s it had a rebirth with the revitalization of the NEA and things like CETA, which funded this organization. That was my first arts association of San Antonio. I was still living in San Francisco, but I would be brought in to do work. And it continued. I established this relationship with them, and then when I started doing my own work with Jump-Start and started to become known as a writer; they co-produced my first show. That established my base in the African-American community, through the Carver. Some people think of Jump-Start as a queer organization because we have been out front by doing work by queer artists and queer-themed work has always been a part of what we do. Some people think it is a black organization because of me and my work that has come through there. It is part of having all those different voices. The one they’ve seen most recently — people like to really identify you. I’ve accepted it. At first it was a shock. But after all these years, I have accepted my leadership role in the African-American community. I am consulted all the time. I am asked to be on committees. I’ve been honored a lot, recognized for my work by the state, by the city, by organizations. Partly it is like the small-pond syndrome. There are so few black people here. Those that are doing something really poke out. It is easy to see me here, where it wouldn’t be in Atlanta. It would be a harder struggle. I really have gotten a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure from my work in the school. I work in Douglass school, this is my fifth year there.

SB: Part of our concept of community partners is our education work. How did we start that? I don’t have a memory of how that started

KH: I’m coming from the outside, and I’m coming at what seems like a point when the community partnerships are really important. They are really exciting to Steve, I’ve talked to the board...

SH: It is more thrilling to me — the feedback is so immediate and the gratification is right there on a daily basis when you do that kind of work. The kids don’t know how to lie about it. They either love it or they are bored to death, and you know both things.

SB: Charlie and I sometimes say, jokingly, we’ll quit the performance work and just do the education work. Just kidding. But how did we start it?

SH: My memory of it is that Dionna, who is a company member you probably won’t meet.

SB: She is a teacher and she is not around a lot.

SH: She is an incredible artist, and she is also really respected in the community. She is a teacher. She conceived the idea just as she conceived the idea for the Festival de Libre Enganche. She is a real conceptualizer kind of person. Steve kind of fleshed it out. The first school we were in was Bonham because it is our neighborhood school. It is a few blocks away. That was a logical place. My first job with the program was to read to kids, stories or poems. Then it got more formalized when we hired Michael. We hired a teacher through TCA. He went to Bonham first, then it branched to other schools. Once the word got out — it was a desert in terms of arts in the schools. The city had a program but it was very hit it and quit it, oh, we are fabulous artists, play the guitar, ’bye."

SB: Make a puppet, do a show.

SH: And it was over. Our commitment was long-term, we stayed with the kids for years. A lot of kids we have seen third grade to graduation. That is really gratifying. To get the response from the teachers and the respect from the teachers and parents.

SB: I think also we really wanted to make an impact in the neighborhood we worked and a lot of us lived in. We really wanted to be here first. It expanded pretty quickly. We were a couple of years at Bonham before we went over to Douglass.

SH: And we were, as we often are, right ahead of the curve in terms of the funding. Now it has just mushroomed. It is this huge all-over-the-country art education. How to partner with artists in the schools is a big, big thing for a lot of funders. You can fund someone to do a piece, but when you fund education you are funding the future. There are a lot of implications.

KH: I see the education piece as a part of the community piece, but I also see doing a really gay piece, or a really black piece, or doing the Festival and bringing Chicano, Latino and Mexican artists together as extensions. Ways you touch community. One of the big questions that the whole project is interested in is what are the ways that you are impacting these communities? And then the flip side, in engaging in community work, how do you see that affecting the work you do with the company?

SH: It certainly broadens what people think about what we do and who we are. People that might have been judgmental about our work and our politics are less so when they see the work we have done with education. It mitigates somewhat people who are reactionary when we do an overtly queer piece or a clearly anti-government, or something that is really taking a radical stance in their view. That we are in the schools, that we are doing this really grassroots, nuts and bolts, academic work with the curriculum, with the students, with the teachers and producing over a period of years. It is like, well, maybe all the things I heard about queers aren’t true. I’ve almost had people say that to me. "I thought it was this way. My husband told me that you guys had this agenda and you don’t." I think that has become a practical outcome, it is one of the realities. It is educational. Very educated. And we are educated.

SB: The reason for this for me is that there is a way to affect — .see I don’t even like that terminology. There is a way to make an exchange with the community. And for me that is what it is about, because we are learning as much as we are teaching. There is a way to make and exchange with the community, and our work can’t do all that. Like our work in the theater can’t do that. We need to think of other ways and methodologies for doing that. We are good educators. We can take the methodology to create work, or to create visual art, or to create a performance work with young people.

What is interesting to me is that I have really changed. I don’t care that these kids don’t come to see our work at Jump-Start. I don’t care that they don’t come and see the black work, the gay work, whatever—because that is not for them. We are doing something different with them. My big rail now is they keep saying, "Bring young people into the theater now because they will be your future audiences". That is absolute bullshit. Some of them will be, some of them will continue with it, and some of them will not. You know the symphony has been bringing students to see their symphonies for 40 years and their audiences continue to go down. It is not working. There is no model of it working on a long term. Yes, you will find a few that will become incredible audience members, or find the artist within themselves and really blossom, but that isn’t because we are bringing them to our space. It is because we are working with them in their own school. That is where the blossom will happen. It is also about this cross-over audience bullshit. Crossing communities. So we get a gay male audience for this, we get a black audience for this. Fuck it. Fine. I’m tired of thinking that it is our responsibility to get these gay men to come and see this black show and to make sure these black folks come to see this gay show. It’s not going to happen, and I’m not worried about it anymore. We know that we have a certain core audience that will cross over. Usually straight white women that will come see anything that we do. There are others that are resistant. We can’t break — that is society. We are there to push a few bricks off that wall, but we can’t make that wall tumble down. You can get a little peephole here in there. Arts education people are always saying, "Get those children into your space, they are the future audience". And I say no. We are doing this work with them. If they came to see Shimi’s show, a few of them would love it and it would probably transcend them, but who knows what others might think. I don’t mind that they don’t know all of us. They know enough of us.

KH: I totally agree with you. I think there are times when a person comes to a Chicano show in your space and just that they know that they are in a space where there was a really gay thing, or a really black thing, or a youth-voices thing a month before, that already is a big deal. At the space I run, people can come to a dance performance or come on a Tuesday night to a contact improv jam that we had running for six years. For them it is a big deal just to be in a space that they know a lot of intense, radical sexuality stuff happens. Just that they are sharing the space, to them they feel like they are crossing a border. Sometimes they have to do the jam and there is a visual-art exhibit on the wall of like S/M photographs or something. That is huge. We do not take that for granted, like, oh, they are interested in the body, they’ll love that. We know it is a big challenge and a slight rubbing up against. I agree with you. Bussing people to see shows does not make an audience. I think it is a misunderstanding of the way culture is actually created. If the general context is not to go to the theater, just because they got bused is not enough intervention. They aren’t creating a habit of it, because it isn’t something that they did themselves. Nor did they see anyone in their family do it. If they start making work of interest to people in their community, that is obviously going to be the more successful long-term strategy.

SB: What is interesting is that largest development in terms of our performance persona in the last five years is that we are considered a Chicano or Mexican-American space. We do all the work of Sandra Cisneros, we are doing Big Bad and Beautiful work, we are doing the Latin’s Anonymous work, we are doing all this work. We have this big festival.

SH: To quote the director of the Guadalupe "Jump-Start is eating our lunch." All the artists left them and came to us, without any effort on our part. They know that they would be received here and not have to deal with the turmoil.

SB: And just like we are not a gay space, we are not a queer space, we are not a Chicano space. That is really not what we are. We are perceived by a lot of the community, particularly the Mexican-American community as a Chicano performance space. They may only come to see the Chicano work. "La Frontera," is it in Spanish? I always love that question cause I never know what they want me to say, there’s not or there’s a lot. I love that question. I know the answer.

KH: But you don’t know how to qualify it, like "there is a little but don’t worry" or "there is a lot, but not for you".

SB: It always makes me hesitate.

KH: We have that more with, "Is there nudity?" Or "Is there sexual content?" You have to listen to how they ask it, but don’t try to interpret. Just tell them the answer.

SB: I know that is me, too. But it always catches me, ’cause I want to know what they are wanting.

KH: So, I am almost out of tape, but I would love to hear maybe just one story from each of you about what you think you do best, or what are your favorite projects.

SB: I know what I am feeling artistically what is really helpful for me is that I’ve quit using the term "director." This may be total pompous bullshit, but when I worked with solo artists I stopped using the word director and started using the word facilitator. I am having a great time. I feel a strength of mine is to help people do their best work. I know I implant my artistry on it, too, but I feel like I have a talent with helping artists. Particularly some solo artists like Kitty Williams, Paul, Shimi, they all want to have me work on their shows. It is energizing me. Just in a lazy way, ’cause I just go do this and do that and then they go away and work for a few days and then come back. I don’t have to be the one with them at every rehearsal. It is so great. They are working on their own stuff. I feel like a luxury to be a part of a process, to be part of the creation of something, to have an impact on it but you don’t have to be responsible for it all the time. That you are really helping someone else make their work. I thought in a way that might be dissatisfying to me; it has been more satisfying.

SH: My favorite project that we do is the Performance Party, because — not that I take my own work for granted. It is important to me. It is emotional, it is more like traumatic. Performance Party is a marathon performance of people doing ten minutes or five minutes. It is like a microcosm. In January when we did it we had 33 or something separate performances...

SB: Try 38.

KH: In one evening? That is insane.

SH: All across the board though. From wild drag satire to very serious dance to someone’s new piece. It is the best of both worlds in that it is curated. We have a certain core of people that we always ask, but there is always room for new people to try out stuff. It is totally no risk. There is no pay. If something sucks, well, it only sucks for five minutes and it is over. Then the next thing will not suck. It is like this whole thing.

SB: And it is free. It is for our anniversary. Last year we had literally 800 people come. Our theater is only coded for 300 so people have to stand outside and wait for people to leave and then they can come in. We are totally illegal that night. We probably have 4-500 people in the theater . There were only 200 seats and everyone else was along the wall, sitting along the stage, sitting in the wings...

KHL: Right. I love free shows, but it seems to me you should start doing things outdoors, too, for the waiting people.

SB: Well, they are out in the lobby.

SH: It is a social event.

SB: And we always do it on the first Saturday of the year. It opens the season.

SH: As an audience member and as a lover of performance and seeing it, I have had some of my highest moments at performance parties. My jaw just has dropped. This gorgeous juxtaposition seeing a little boy with Downs Syndrome dancing to the salsa group. I lost it. He was so happy, and we were, too. It’s the moments like that that only happen at performance party, because it has such an open door.

SB: So democratic. And the next moment your head is in your shirt.

SH: Or you leave the room.

SB: I don’t see half of performance party. I just have to walk out sometimes.

SH: Sometimes it is painful, or the opposite.

SB: It is the ROOTS model magnified ten times.

Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, interdisciplinary artist choreographer and community arts organizer living in community in San Francisco. Hennessy's solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. Since 1998, he has performed with Cahin-Caha, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Hennessy was a member of the performance collective Core and was a founding member and principle collaborator in Contraband, a San Francisco-based performance company. Hennessy co-directs 848 Community Space. He is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator and agitator.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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