photo by Luke Awtry
It’s been a long, dark year for the American stage—a period marked by stay-at-home mandates and social distancing, which, for theater folks, has meant canceled shows, unrealized seasons, furloughs, layoffs, and lots of uncertainty. Here in Vermont, our own Flynn Center for the Performing Arts appeared quiet during the pandemic, with just a handful of outdoor performances, educational programming, and abiding messages of hope to Burlington residents from the theater’s iconic Main Street marquee. But, as Vermonters emerge from the pandemic with renewed perspective (now is the winter of our discontent), the lights are also coming up for the Flynn. As of January 1, the state’s largest performing arts center welcomed big change with the hiring of Jay Wahl as executive director.
Wahl comes to the Flynn after eleven years at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, where he was producing artistic director. Widely regarded for his creative, “outside-the-box” thinking, Wahl doesn’t necessarily see his approach to art making as unconventional. Which is ironic since this is the man who commissioned Transe Express, the renowned theater troupe out of central France, to build a thirty-foot human chandelier of musicians for a giant public dance party. Also, the man who invited a thousand people to help build a ten-story building out of cardboard in front of Philadelphia City Hall as a means to explore democratic art forms.
Wahl’s first major event with the Flynn was the ten-day Discover Jazz Festival in early June that brought 70 hours of free music as a gift to the city after a year of deep loss. With the success of Jazz Fest under his belt, Wahl sat down to speak with Hello Burlington about his new position. After the how-are-you-settling-into-life-in-Vermont portion of the interview (It’s going great, by the way. He loves it.), he generously jumped headfirst into a conversation about the performing arts in this cultural moment.
photo by Bear Cieri
HB: You’re known as an artistic director for challenging old theater models, and your work has been described as unconventional. In your own words, how would you describe the approach to your work?
JW: It’s always interesting to hear reflected back to me how people are interpreting my work. My approach is probably unconventional compared to other approaches, but that’s not what’s driving me. I’m not really interested in things for their own sake. I’m trying to understand about people; when you listen to someone, share their story in whatever form, you have a window into their perspective. And in that moment, you’re spending your attention on their perspective, which means you’re giving value to their perspective, which is what empathy is. So, in a culture which seems to be not as full of empathy as I might like or many of us might like, I think the arts are the engine that makes that happen.
When you start by the question whose story needs to be told, then the unconventional starts to happen. So suddenly, you’re like, well, this person living in my community has an interesting story to share. And so you help them share it. And then suddenly people are like, oh my God, it’s so avant-garde. But you’re like, well, no, this is your neighbor. This is somebody whose story is legitimately worth considering. And that is not unconventional.
Wahl’s first event for the Flynn was its biggest. And the Discover Jazz Festival coincided with the lifting of Vermont’s COVID restrictions. Photo by Bear Cieri.
HB: You’re coming from the Kimmel Center in a city of one and a half million people, to the Flynn Center, located in a city of 43,000 people. How have you had to adjust to that change in scope?
JW: The scale is actually one of the things I was drawn to at the Flynn. At the Kimmel Center I was part of one of the largest arts organizations in America, serving Philadelphia—the region people were buying tickets from was about five million. So the scale was quite different. What does it mean to try to hold arts conversations in a small geographic region of many people, as opposed to an arts organization with very few people in a very large area, because actually, when you look at the Flynn’s education programs, we serve the whole state. Eighty-two percent of the schools in Vermont have attended programs at the Flynn in the last decade. That’s extraordinary, and that's a different level of responsibility in a way.
Also, in Philadelphia, there were many, many theater companies. If I just chose to do something outside or in the basement or on the roof or wherever, I added to the ecology there. The Flynn is the fundamental basis of the arts ecology here. Other artists are doing great work, but we’re really one of the few arts organizations bringing major international artists to Vermont, and that’s also a different level of responsibility.
![The geographic scale of artistic conversation is actually largely, I believe, abandoned by the professional arts class of this country. If you look at the ways in which rural areas and urban centers are not communicating right now, you could say, oh, well, that’s part of the political challenges we’re having because they’re not listening to each other, which means we don’t have an end. I would argue that the arts are a place that’s supposed to hold dialogue. If I can think about ways that the arts could drive conversation between people of different communities in Vermont, that’s really exciting. And that was worth coming here for.The best advice I got about coming to Vermont was to go where they’re asking good questions. [Vermonters] are very civic-minded, very community-focused. In a state where they feel that way, we still are having these challenges: How do we respect each other equally? How do we create equity for all of our citizens? How does everyone’s voice get heard? And I really feel like the people of Vermont really care about these questions. - Photo by Bear Cieri](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_fill,h_800,q_75,w_1200/v1/clients/vermont/D21_06_15_0380_4f82c1c0-2101-4115-84b0-c68de734f83b.jpg)
The geographic scale of artistic conversation is actually largely, I believe, abandoned by the professional arts class of this country. If you look at the ways in which rural areas and urban centers are not communicating right now, you could say, oh, well, that’s part of the political challenges we’re having because they’re not listening to each other, which means we don’t have an end. I would argue that the arts are a place that’s supposed to hold dialogue. If I can think about ways that the arts could drive conversation between people of different communities in Vermont, that’s really exciting. And that was worth coming here for.
The best advice I got about coming to Vermont was to go where they’re asking good questions. [Vermonters] are very civic-minded, very community-focused. In a state where they feel that way, we still are having these challenges: How do we respect each other equally? How do we create equity for all of our citizens? How does everyone’s voice get heard? And I really feel like the people of Vermont really care about these questions.
Photo by Bear Cieri
HB: How do you plan to give Vermont communities greater access to the arts?
JW: I don’t know what that means yet. One of the things that I think the Flynn was excited to bring me on board for is my belief that the Flynn wants to be porous, that the participation of the arts goes in and out; it goes both ways. It comes to us. We go to it. The walls are not so solid.
HB: Coming out of the pandemic, do you see this moment as an opportunity to do a reset at the Flynn?
![JW: It’s always an opportunity because we always have a responsibility to keep listening and keep asking questions. So that’s just true. The pandemic offered a pause where we could consider what’s really important about the work we’re doing. The Flynn is a brilliant organization that has cared about arts education for decades. And all I’m trying to do is keep asking, how do we keep doing that? Whose voices can be included? Are there models and some perspectives that inadvertently we’ve left out? So I get to hold a mirror up to everything, but it’s not some sweeping change. I care a lot about how we activate public space and the ways that we further [the Flynn’s] mission as it is already. - Discover Jazz Block Party. Photo by Bear Cieri.](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_fill,h_800,q_75,w_1200/v1/clients/vermont/D21_06_15_0420_2100x1400_d9620c0d_1940_4ce2_ab9c_700c70fc6194_9ec42390-74a8-4adc-bf36-fee89abda5fa.jpg)
JW: It’s always an opportunity because we always have a responsibility to keep listening and keep asking questions. So that’s just true. The pandemic offered a pause where we could consider what’s really important about the work we’re doing. The Flynn is a brilliant organization that has cared about arts education for decades. And all I’m trying to do is keep asking, how do we keep doing that? Whose voices can be included? Are there models and some perspectives that inadvertently we’ve left out? So I get to hold a mirror up to everything, but it’s not some sweeping change. I care a lot about how we activate public space and the ways that we further [the Flynn’s] mission as it is already.
Discover Jazz Block Party. Photo by Bear Cieri.
HB: Now that the Governor has lifted the mandates. What is the plan for the Flynn’s rollout?
JW: So we’re working on that now. We’re going to be doing some hiring. We want people to be a part of the team, and we will work towards our reopening. We expect to do that in the fall, and we’ll have an announcement about what that will look like very soon. The Flynn is gonna be doing shows, but like I said I think you can expect us to be a little more porous. We’re going to think differently around when we’re in a community versus when we’re asking them to come here and how we find balance in those things. And how do we welcome people with diverse perspectives? That’s really important. So yeah, we have plan. It’s a journey, and I’m part of a good team. I’m very lucky.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
