With Founding Producing Artistic Director Brittney Brady and board member Phil Heubeck departing for California, Ghostbird Theatre Company is reassigning its leadership team. Starting with the 2017-18 season, Barry Cavin will take on the role of Artistic Director, Katelyn Gravel will be Associate Artistic Director, and Jim Brock will be Producing Director.
"Under Brittney's leadership, Ghostbird is in excellent financial shape, always ending the year in the black," says Jim Brock. "We secured significant private and public sponsorships, have a strong and appreciative audience base, so that we were able to pay all our contributing artists last season. Her vision enabled us to become a site-influenced theatre company, and her insistence on productions of artistic quality, of interdisciplinary arts, and of beauty has given our theatre company a strong sense of purpose."
Barry Cavin, having been the Associate Artistic Director for Ghostbird since 2014 and having served as Brittney's mentor as a director, says that Ghostbird will very much be the same, which also means it will continue to evolve. "Ghostbird has proven it can build excellent, noteworthy theatre with the most modest of budgets. We have been successful in securing grants and working with very generous partners in the community. Our goal is to continue to increase our budgets, to have more funding to cover production costs and to pay our artists. We will continue building on our brand of sight-inspired theatre, and we will continue to develop our relationships especially with collaborative artists and performers." As Artistic Director, Cavin will be responsible for Ghostbird's programming, creative staffing of its productions, and artistic direction for the theatre company.
Katelyn Gravel, in her duties as Associate Artistic Director, will continue her work in assisting with the creative teams for each production, particularly with music, costuming, hair, make-up, and the aesthetics of the productions. "Ghostbird," she says, "will always be a place where there's something magical going on. We work hard with our performers, musicians, and artists, but it's fun, joyful work. In the end, if we produce something beautiful or interesting, then we've done our job. My work will be to support our artists, artists who inspire us and artists who want to play with us in our play-making."
As Producing Director, Jim Brock will be responsible for the varied operational demands of Ghostbird, from grantwriting to house management. "All our positions," he says, "are as unpaid volunteers, and we each have day jobs--in Katelyn's case, a demanding business--and so the pleasure of our work is that we genuinely love theatre and performance. When we started Ghostbird, we thought of it more like the formation of a band, where we might have a shelf-life of three or five years and then just head our separate ways. Instead, we created a quirky and true theatre company. We'll keep at is as long as we can produce work that challenges us."