Divorce, American style

SPLIT DECISION Paparelli saw most of his ensemble walk out.

Fully twenty-three artists from the 27-member ensemble of American Theater Company recently seceded from the company, citing irreconcilable differences with critically favored artistic director PJ Paparelli. The 24-year-old group’s émigrés include such distinguished actors as Carmen Roman and Kate Buddeke.

The mass exodus from the 501c3 company illustrates a much larger longtime tension in an industry full of artist pals who set up nonprofits to produce plays for themselves to star in. The public divorce of the ATC ensemble (those who left have re-formed under the group’s original name, American Blues Company) is a PR black eye for Paparelli, who came to ATC from Perseverance Theatre in Alaska in late 2007. In the outraged comments section of the Chicago Tribune’s blog the Theater Loop, where Chris Jones first posted the story March 26, a series of accusations from both anonymous and self-identifying voices have pegged Paparelli as a carpetbagging opportunist with diabolical plans to hijack the company. “It’s been a disappointment, and very disruptive for next season,” Paparelli says.

But our research reveals that Paparelli, while prickly to some and plain uncommunicative to others, inherited a business model that may have been unsustainable. Rarely in recent years has it been so publicly demonstrated that maintaining a democratic, artist-run theater and running a healthy, functional nonprofit can be mutually exclusive.

After talking with several ensemble and board members, former office staff members and Paparelli himself, it became clear that an internal breakdown of communications, spurred by Paparelli’s insistence that he be the only channel through which the ensemble, board and staff addressed one another, hastened the split. But if Paparelli’s disciplinarian routine prompted the breakaway, the board welcomed his new-sheriff behavior.

Macie Huwiler, an ATC board member of 13 years, but also a pal and admirer of everyone in the ensemble, says the separation of powers Paparelli began instituting was long overdue. The board was looking for someone who could communicate on behalf of the artistic collective rather than being approached directly by ensemble members who saw the nonprofit as an open-borders utopia.

“Interference from the ensemble has been an issue ever since I’ve been a part of the organization. It’s an uneasy truth,” says Huwiler, who’s served through the tenures of four artistic directors. “The board’s main objective is fiscal responsibility, and the ensemble grew this board and the administrative staff at its own behest. But I think a lot of them look at it all now and think, This isn’t what I signed up for.”

Certainly the ensemble members started thinking that last spring, when Paparelli pushed a charter clause on the group that allowed for the expulsion of company members. Last month, after various private disagreements among Paparelli, the ensemble and the board, longtime ensemble members Stef Tovar and Gwendolyn Whiteside were asked by the board to leave ATC—a first for the company. Buddeke, meanwhile, received walking papers via an e-mail from the board. Those expulsions, along with Paparelli’s refusal to consider a project several ensemble members were pushing as a 25th-anniversary group vehicle for next season, prompted the rush for the exit.

“The board said PJ couldn’t do his job unless three people left,” says defecting ensemble member Tania Richard. Paparelli also asked the board to tell the ensemble not to contact him while he made the final season selection. “At that point, we were allowed no communication with him, so our hands were tied. We had to stand as a group.”

Richard says the internal tension came from the ensemble’s feeling that Paparelli was taking away its artistic voice and not, as has been rabidly argued on the Theater Loop, because the group was resisting his efforts to diversify the programming. (Paparelli confirms this. “No one in the ensemble is racist. That’s been ridiculous.”)

In fact, the galvanizing quality of Paparelli’s programming seems to be the one thing everyone, even the most righteously angered ATC refugees, can agree on. (“Speech and Debate [Paparelli’s first ATC show] was great,” Buddeke generously allows.) Upon arriving in Chicago, Paparelli rejuvenated ATC’s lineup with Itamar Moses’s death-row fantasy Celebrity Row, the Tectonic Theater Project’s sprawling Jonestown docu-play The People’s Temple and, especially, a collaboration with Congo Square that paired Sam Shepard’s hitherto all-white True West with Suzan-Lori Parks’s African-American Topdog/Underdog and then daringly flipped the casts.

The increased range in race, age and cultural perspective that Paparelli’s civically engaged programming has brought to ATC, which had mostly showcased its actors with classics and typical regional-theater fare, has led to a generous increase in foundational support. According to Huwiler’s co–vice president, Jeff Morof, courting foundations became easier when the programming became less standard. “I had a hard time getting [corporate funders] to come see I Do! I Do! and Born Yesterday,” Morof says. And, like Huwiler, he appreciates that Paparelli has final say in artistic matters. “At the end of the day, someone has to make a decision,” Morof says, referring to the Wild West backstage drama inherent in any collective creative endeavor.

All parties we spoke with agree that the split, while painful, is the best for both companies. Paparelli can continue the exciting work he’s begun, while American Blues can resume a more democratic style of leadership.

The vilifying of Paparelli has come in part from the contrast between the humbled, reverent, media-darling enthusiasm Paparelli has so frequently and publicly trotted out for his newly adopted city, and on- and-off-the-record accounts of his calculated, divisive machinations behind the scenes. But as with so many Chicago companies built primarily to showcase actors, the unruly combo of a vocal artistic ensemble, an administrative staff and a legally accountable board of directors has made ATC a long-simmering pressure cooker.

In business terms, the old Chicago family recipe for ensemble theater might have a basic flaw: too many chefs.

Kris Vire contributed reporting.

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