Interview with Nita Langner, board president

By Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy: Why do you support Jump-Start?

Nita Langner: Well, I’ve been following them ever since they began 16 years ago. I like their originality and creativeness. I’ve just been a fan of theirs. I saw their very first production. It was in someone’s house. I’ve just been following ever since. I’ve gone to almost everything they have ever done.

KH: Tell me some of the big changes that they’ve been through.

NL: A lot of the same people are still with them. They’ve all just grown artistically. They’ve taken in new members, but the old members just keep on learning new things. The new playwrights have just been doing wonderful things. There are three new ones that they have taken in in the last four or five years. I like it because you can always depend on Jump-Start doing things that are a little bit edgy, doing things that are different from what you see at other theaters. They don’t mind pushing a button. Steve gives everybody a lot of room to experiment and to grow, to work on their own projects.

KH: How does the board function? What is the role that you play in the company?

NL: We are a working board, as opposed to someone chosen to raise money or someone chose because they have money. We do everything from scrub the bathrooms to be hostesses at the productions. We do everything. There are 24 I believe right now, from all ages and all backgrounds. We are all drawn to Jump-Start for more or less the same reason.

KH: What do you think is the effect Jump-Start has in the larger community in San Antonio, or how has that grown?

NL: They do have a following, but I don’t know that you could say they have a great influence on the community as a whole. They have a reputation of being always original if nothing else. I think one way they have influenced is through their education program. They go into schools, they do a lot of work in schools. They’ve got quite a name for themselves for that.

KH: What are some of the challenges Jump-Start is facing now, or what are some of the big challenges they have faced in their history?

NL: Well, always money. Right now we are in the middle of a capital campaign. They’ve been successful in that they have been able, if nothing else, to stay open for 16 years. It is quite a record. Probably the oldest company in San Antonio, outside of our little theater group. Their challenge now is to continue to get better and offer better facilities. We reached just about all we could do at that level. We are mid-level. We want to kick it up a notch or two and have a better, more comfortable theater , offer classes, have classrooms, be able to expand the education program, of course increase our membership.

KH: Talk to me a little bit about the work that they do in terms of where the ideas come from, what it’s about, who do they speak to, who is it targeted to.

NL: Their reason for being is to produce work that would not normally be shown. Works by women, works about women, works about sexual identity, the disenfranchised, the minority, anyone who would not usually find a play about them in San Antonio in the other theaters. Then to produce new and fresh works rather than plays that have been established. That is mainly why it was organized. To give young actors and writers a chance to have some place to work, and to write, and to showplace about subjects that maybe the others don’t. It used to be pretty avant-garde and got a reputation of being a little bit too edgy for some people. I think the public has kind of grown into theater of that kind now, so they are not considered so edgy anymore. They are just considered now to do good plays, good work and something that you can’t see anyplace else in San Antonio. They have a good reputation in town now as just a solid theater .

KH: A lot of people who are going to be hearing these interviews are not going to know about Jump-Start. What is something that you would want them to know? Any kind of story...

NL: I would like them to know that Jump-Start and the director Steve Bailey really cares about helping young people grow in their work. You talk to anybody that is in the company and they will say that they have been able to learn at Jump-Start and grow. It gives a place for interested actors and writers to produce their works that otherwise they would have a hard time getting done, and just to stay there and learn all they can.

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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