Our field has lost one of its great visionary leaders and managers, Donald Schoenbaum. While Don had been retired for more than 26 years, the impact of his accomplishments and the value of his mentoring and observations continue to be of vital importance for the nation’s theatres.
Don started his career in 1958 as a producer, director and manager of the Repertory Players of Omaha. His day job was vending machines; his real job—and his passion—was producing theatre. In 1963 Don and Adrian Hall established a repertory theatre in Providence, R.I., the Trinity Repertory Company. The following year Schoenbaum joined Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler as associate manager of the newly established Guthrie Theater. Five years later, after those founders had departed, Don was appointed the Guthrie’s managing director and was tasked with finding a new artistic director, which he did, in Michael Langham.
The Ford Foundation had been underwriting a significant portion of the Guthrie’s annual earnings gaps for its first seven years. When Don became managing director, that foundation’s commitment had expired and the theatre had no capacity or strategy to make up the loss. The theatre was in a serious financial crisis, but it had no development or fundraising professional on staff. In those days there was no city, state or federal support for the arts. Corporate support was nominal. Individual giving, long a mainstay for symphonies and museums, was not perceived as a necessity for theatres. After all, Broadway made money.
With the help of some very generous trustees and strong community response to Langham’s initial seasons, the Guthrie stabilized, giving Schoenbaum the much-needed time to build a new economic and producing model for the theatre. In the following years he transformed the Guthrie’s operating model from a five-play classical summer festival to a year-round resident theatre season, producing a range of classical and contemporary works. Few understood how serious the financial plight of the Guthrie had been, and how close the theatre had come to actually shutting down. The fact that the Guthrie will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next year is due in large part to Don’s ground-breaking leadership through those difficult, transformative years.
When the Guthrie opened, it operated under the Broadway production contract, because there was no other option, other than the stock contract, for productions outside New York. Don, a brilliant and shrewd negotiator, was one of the key players in establishing the League of Resident Theatres and its initial national bargaining agreements. Today many of those agreements ensure that thousands of professional actors, stage managers, designers and directors employed by our theatres have good working conditions, compensation and, most important, health and pension benefits.
Beyond serving as one of the early founders and presidents of LORT, Don was one of the first chairs of the theatre panel at the NEA; co-founder of the American Arts Alliance (the early advocacy organization for federal support of theatre, symphonies, dance and museums); and a leader in lobbying for city, country and state support for the arts in Minnesota.
Since 1986 Don lived in Sarasota, Fla., and was an active and much-valued trustee of the Asolo Theatre Company. During those years, Don continued to be a keen observer of the field. Several times he spoke to the LORT membership; he was a tour de force of memory, historiography and eloquence. Notes from those talks were widely circulated in the field.
Schoenbaum was one of the first full-time professional managers solely responsible for the management and finances of their theatres. He and his counterparts would bring new, more sophisticated management, marketing and fundraising skills and strategies to underwrite the growing professionalism of American theatres and the increasing ambitions of their artistic directors and artists.
I went to work at the Guthrie during Don’s first year as managing director and later became his associate manager. As a young manager fresh out of college, having the opportunity to observe Don, his trustees and the community during that period of crisis was an incredibly valuable learning experience. Little did I realize how many times I would find myself and my theatres in similarly troubled situations as my career progressed. Like so many of my peers, I was remarkably fortunate in such circumstances to have access to the wisdom, experience and understanding of Don Schoenbaum. He will be missed.
David Hawkanson is managing director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago.
