May 2020 - Arts Leader Spotlight
Announcing May’s Arts Leader Spotlight…
In honor of Governor Hogan’s “Year of the Woman”, MSDE Fine Arts will celebrate the work of the women arts education leaders in 2020.
This month we celebrate the women of the Artistic and Learning & Social Accountability leadership of Baltimore Center Stage! Congratulations to four incredible women!
The State Theatre of Maryland, Baltimore Center Stage, always delivers a dynamic and engaging theatre season. They are also a key partner for the annual Best of Maryland Arts Education Festival and their arts education programming annually provides Maryland students with access to professional artists, collaborative creative practices, and dynamic performances. We celebrate the leadership, vision, and innovation we have come to expect from Baltimore Center Stage by spotlighting their Artistic and Learning & Social Accountability leadership.
Stephanie Ybarra
Artistic Director
When did you realize you were an artist?
My earliest memories involve me creating and performing in some way. While my artistry has taken many shapes over my lifetime – music, dance, acting, and now producing – being an artist is core to who I have always been.
Why does arts education matter to you?
I discovered much later in life that I learn differently from some of my peers; I learn best when I can either visualize it or put it into my body somehow. Being a part of dance, music and theater growing up meant that I got to learn and retain information in a way that was natural to me. And, not only did my own arts education allow me to explore great works of art by master composers, visual artists and writers, but being steeped in the arts throughout my education has deeply impacted my ability to think creatively and expansively.
As a leader in the Arts, what are your priorities for the coming year?
My biggest priority for the coming year involve finding ways to make artmaking more equitable. Theater is inherently communal and collaborative, but it has become exclusive in a way that betrays the ideals of the art form. Over the course of the next year we have real opportunities to remake and rebuild our practices and processes to allow more people to experience live theater.
How have those priorities changed due to the recent COVID-19 State of Emergency?
In so many ways, those priorities haven’t changed. In fact, the COVID-19 crisis has sharpened my focus on creating equitable conditions for artists and audiences alike.
How have you and your organization been responding to COVID-19?
I’m proud of the people who at Baltimore Center Stage – this staff has responded with courage, creativity and hope throughout the entire crisis. Our costume shop is making masks while our prop shop is making face shields for healthcare workers; our box office is calling and checking in on every subscriber; our Learning and Social Accountability team is still showing up virtually to teach residencies in schools…the list goes on and on. In short, Baltimore Center Stage is open for storytelling and committed to being of service to our community.
How does creativity show up in your day?
I’ll be honest, it’s been a real struggle to stay in a generative/creative headspace these last several weeks. Currently, creativity is showing up in the most unlikely places throughout my day – I helped my partner build a fort for a class he was teaching and I am making up songs to sing for my niece. They are more simple moments of creativity, but they bring me joy all the same.
Share a recommendation of a book, artist, event, or piece of work that inspires you!
My go-to book recommendation for every artist is “Emergent Strategy” by Adrienne Maree Brown. Her work informs everything I do these days – I can’t say enough good things about it!
Twitter: @saybarra
IG: Stephanie Ybarra
Chiara Klein
Director of Artistic Producing
When did you realize you were an artist?
I can’t point to an exact moment of realization given that it was such a fundamental part of who I am and who I’ve been. Some time between my toddlerhood performing full Broadway scores on my living room coffee table, founding my first theater company as a tenth grader, and now, it became pretty obvious.
Why does arts education matter to you?
I believe that people in general, but young people especially, are at their best when the circumstances are created wherein they can be wholly and unapologetically themselves. That is what arts education does. The world spends so much time telling us that we’re too much and that we should be less. The arts tell give us permission to be more.
As a leader in the Arts, what are your priorities for the coming year?
I echo Stephanie in that my number one priority is to continue to iterate and innovate practices and processes that make our version of artmaking more equitable. One of the things that I value most about this team is our collective dissatisfaction with “the way we’ve always done things” – whether as an industry, as an organization, or as a nation. We are constantly interrogating, innovating, and experimenting in pursuit of more equitable and enjoyable ways of working.
How have those priorities changed due to the recent COVID-19 State of Emergency?
The priorities haven’t changed, but the stakes certainly have. I don’t think that you could dream up a more dramatic shock to the status quo then COVID-19; suddenly, “the way we’ve always done things” is no longer possible. This is an unprecedented opportunity to collectively imagine new, more equitable, futures for the artform and contributing to that collective is top of mind.
How does creativity show up in your day?
My favorite creative outlet is the time I spend thinking of ways to surprise and delight others. At Baltimore Center Stage I am the unofficial (self-proclaimed?) Director of Shenanigans and even in this time of shelter at home, I spend a lot of time thinking of pranks, surprises, games, and random acts of nonsense that I can orchestrate.
Share a recommendation of a book, artist, event, or piece of work that inspires you!
Because Stephanie took Emergent Strategy, I’ll take The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. It reframes business (and life) as an infinite game without a winner and a loser rather than a finite game with a clear end. I could go on and on about the ways that it is informing my thinking in the age of COVID-19, but for now I’ll say – read it!
Twitter: @thechiaraklein
IG: chiarak18
Annalisa Dias
Director of Artistic Partnerships & Innovation
When did you realize you were an artist?
This is an ongoing process of realization and becoming for me. There are so many (colonial, capitalist, patriarchal) systems and structures that keep us from claiming artistry as a core part of who we are, so I think I’m constantly in a process of finding what my own artistry looks like.
Why does arts education matter to you?
10 years ago I was teaching an after school theatre program that I founded at a middle school where I was also serving as a special education assistant. One of my students who had cognitive processing issues (memory recall was very difficult for her) consistently came to the theatre class. She ended up choosing a monologue from Hamlet, and struggled to memorize it at first. However, when she paired the lines with a gestural movement phrase, she was able to memorize the whole thing. Her body remembered the sequence in a way that her mind wouldn’t. She surprised herself and was so excited. Later, her subject area teachers asked me what I had been doing because her self esteem had skyrocketed and she started doing better in her other classes. Theatre & dance had transformed her perception of herself and her ability to learn. I’ll never forget this student.
As a leader in the Arts, what are your priorities for the coming year?
My priorities in all my artmaking and living processes are to build accountable relationships (with humans, more-than-humans, and the planet).
How have those priorities changed due to the recent COVID-19 State of Emergency?
The COVID crisis has amplified the coercive inequities that operate in colonial, capitalist society. Now is the time to imagine more just and regenerative futures.
How does creativity show up in your day?
At the moment, I’m finding creativity in working with plants – watching them grow, learning when they need water and sunlight, etc. It’s like learning a new language with each one.
Share a recommendation of a book, artist, event, or piece of work that inspires you!
I’ve been recently finding a lot of comfort in the work of Arundhati Roy. She has an incisive yet compassionate eye for the interconnectedness of global systems that is just astounding to me.
Twitter: @ajdm
IG: @annalisadias
Website: annalisadias.weebly.com
Adena Varner
Director of Learning & Social Accountability
When did you realize you were an artist?
When my grandmother began telling people the story about me singing at church with my father. She would tell the story about my 2 year old self singing with such pride. People would laugh and smile and seem to beam. I understood at a young age that I was given a gift to bring joy to others. How I share my artistry is what I am still learning and cultivating each day.
Why does arts education matter to you?
Rearing my children is the greatest blessing of my life and I had no idea 13 years ago during my first pregnancy that being a parent, inherently meant becoming a teacher. I remember trying to teach my children things as simple as spelling their names and they couldn’t quite catch it. But as soon as I turned the spelling of their name into a song, or the parts of the body into a dance, their lightbulbs went off and learning became simple. That is when I decided that I wanted to dedicate this moment of my life to arts education, it is the only way to facilitate a rich learning experience.
What are your priorities in the coming year?
I want to listen more. I am inclined to really think about new and exciting ways to connect specifically with our teens and expand opportunities to our youth for engagement with craft making and storytelling.
How have these priorities changed due to the COVID-19 State of Emergency
Interestingly enough, the current crisis has only confirmed by impulse to listen. I really want to lead with compassion and create together. I am not as concerned about performance, but I am even more committed to the process of creating together with our students and giving them the space to just be themselves.
How does creativity show up in your day?
Administration IS creation? Every day I am finding new ways to teach, lead and share our work. I try to keep myself in a state of receptivity to inspiration that I can translate into my work, even when I am not in rehearsal and am sending an email, or holding a meeting. It is critical to keep this side of the art just as engaging as the performance.
Share a recommendation of a book, artist, event, or piece of work that inspires you?
I’ve been taking an interest lately in learning about collage. I’ve been inspired to do a few with my children at home. I really appreciate the dimension and texture. It seems to come alive on the page and simple material bring some much depth.