How Hartford Stage, Long Wharf joined regional theaters throughout the U.S. to support fired fellow artistic director

When Ken-Matt Martin was fired from his job as artistic director of Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre, other theater leaders found a novel way of expressing their outrage. They have commissioned Martin to write a play about his experiences and have pooled $30,000 from their budgets to pay him.

Two of the theaters involved in the commission, Hartford Stage and Long Wharf Theatre, are in Connecticut. Some of the other theater leaders who commissioned the script from Martin also have strong Connecticut connections, including Hana Sharif, a former Hartford Stage associate artistic director who is now the artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; and Stephanie Ybarra, a graduate of the Yale (now Geffen) School of Drama who is now artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage.

Martin was hired to be Victory Gardens’ artistic director in the spring of 2021, lauded at the time by the Chicago Tribune as part of “a surely unprecedented wave of incoming Black artistic talent with the challenging task of leading the Chicago theater and dance communities out of a bruising pandemic.”

His termination is one of a series of decisions by the Victory Gardens’ board that have been marked by “a lack of transparency and high-handed, top-down decision-making” according to American Theatre magazine, which has been chronicling the changes at the theater.

Martin’s dismissal (for “cause,” according to the board, though it has not disclosed that cause) led to mass resignations among the Victory Gardens’ artistic staff as well as public protests and calls for accountability.

In a joint statement released this week, the group that has commissioned the theater piece said: “The unilateral actions of the Victory Gardens board of directors and the dismissal of our valued colleague Ken-Matt Martin hit us where we live. In response, we are collectively committed to support our fellow artistic leader where he lives — by providing financial incentive for him to expand his creative practice, use his voice to make sense of his lived experience, and share the power of that art with our cherished audiences — all across the country.”

The leaders say they also hope to find work for Martin as a director or choreographer at some of their theaters.

A commission is the first step in the development of a new play. The theater leaders say that if the script has merit they are prepared to develop it further with readings, workshops and possibly a full production.

“It’s really a commission,” says Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen. “A standard commission. ... What you’re investing in is the creation of the work. But it’s also a vote of confidence in Ken-Matt. This is a transformational time for the American theater, which is why our group got started. ... Our philosophy is that we work together and we support each other.”

In a lengthy essay on his website, Martin writes about his termination (”less than 14 months after my hiring”) and how he declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for a severance package.

“It is vitally important that I be able to speak truthfully about the needs of the artists and staff,” Martin writes.

The artistic directors showing solidarity with Martin are part of a larger group of theater leaders that began meeting informally online a few years ago and has since been holding Zoom meetings almost weekly. Many of the group’s members, like Ybarra and Long Wharf’s Jacob Padrón, represent a new generation of arts leaders who are younger and demonstrate the changing values and diversity in theater leadership.

The artistic directors, most of whom were hired to run their respective theaters within the past five years, also bonded over the specific struggles of the COVID pandemic, sharing operating strategies and resources. Among the projects that they assisted each other with were the “Play at Home” series of virtual play readings live-streamed during the COVID shutdown. Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Baltimore Center Stage and some of the other theaters have co-produced full productions with Hartford Stage, Long Wharf and other Connecticut theaters in the past.

Besides Bensussen, Padrón, Sharif and Ybarra, the group commissioning Martin’s theater piece includes Robert Barry Fleming of Kentucky’s Actors Theatre of Louisville; Nataki Garrett of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Maria Manuela Goyanes of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.; Jamil Jude of True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta; Marya Sea Kaminski of Pittsburgh Public Theater in Pennsylvania; and Pam MacKinnon of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. These leaders represent some of the most important and influential regional theaters in the country.

“We do reflect a new generation of leaders,” Sharif says. “We’ve been exploring how things may be different. None of us have to go through this hardship alone.”

Until this play-commissioning concept arose, Bensussen says, “I had not thought of our group as outward-presenting. We’re really more of a think tank.”

“It’s truly collective organizing,” says Jacob Padrón. Bensussen, Padron, Sharif and Fleming all say the commission was a group decision.

Robert Barry Flemming, who became the artistic director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2019, says that “art is something we as Americans process a lot of our thoughts through. We were all appointed to share work with our communities through theatrical practices. We want to continue the momentum to do that work. We have a shared philosophy and ideology. Our meetings are quite specific to the recovery of our theaters and the missions that we are trying to sustain.”

None of the four artistic directors were prepared to comment on the specifics of Martin’s termination but spoke generally about the difficulties of being an arts leader today.

“As an artist,” says Sharif, “it’s hard to watch a dedicated and magnificent leader like Ken-Matt go through so many trials. There have been shifts culturally and politically in our industry. There have been ongoing issues at Victory Gardens.

“This is his story to tell, at a time when it is legally and artistically viable for him to tell it.”

“We’ve been in touch with Ken-Matt,” Padrón says. “We had a front-row seat for what he went through. This is a way for us to deal with the wrongful termination of our beloved colleague and also put some money in his pocket.”

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.