Love the Artist, Not the Logo
I have learned, slowly and painfully, that my heart belongs not to institutions but to artists.
Three names rise: Leigh. Eisa. Lina.
They are with me now because their work is alive in the world right now. But they rose from a particular place and moment: a residency in the Berkshires in 2019 where we gathered to make something new. When everything else fell away (the access, the business cards, the budgets) they remained. Not as symbols or success stories, but as breath and bone, as questions that won't quiet, as work that refuses the neat boundaries we try to build around it.
We are conditioned to identify ourselves through affiliations rather than people like the university we attended, the logos on our LinkedIn profile, the building where our office sits. There's comfort in institutional belonging, a sense of stability and shared purpose that feels necessary, even protective. I understand the impulse. I lived it for decades. I relished the bright yellow sun of Sundance opening doors for me (rest in peace, Bob). I love saying I collaborated with IDEO. And I continue linking my purpose with Zoukak, the Beirut collective that embodies the community I admire.
My awakening began in 2020, when Sundance dissolved its Theatre Program and, with it, the professional identity I had cultivated for fifteen years. That year demanded reckonings as the world shifted beneath our feet. For me, the institutional betrayal stung. Not just the layoff itself, but the seemingly casual erasure of something that had felt sacred… essential. How do you eliminate a program that nurtured generations of theatremakers? How do you reduce relationships, residencies and years of artistic development to a line item that could be cut?
Here's what I've discovered in the aftermath: while the institution disappeared overnight, the connections forged within it have proven remarkably durable.
The artists I worked with, championed, and learned from… they remain.
Not as network connections or professional contacts, but as human beings whose work continues shaping the world, whose friendships have deepened beyond organizational contexts.
Take the 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab at MASS MoCA. A cohort that represented everything I believed residencies could and should be.
The entire Lab reflected my curatorial predilections: a large-scale musical about the right to vote, featuring an all-female creative team and acting company; a piece interrogating Black performance and authenticity; and work from Beirut that continually challenged American audiences to look beyond their own experience for truth. These weren't safe choices. They were artists I believed in, creating work that demanded attention, that refused easy consumption.
Leigh
Leigh Silverman was there, developing what would become SUFFS — Shaina Taub's sprawling musical about the women's suffrage movement. I watched Leigh navigate the complexities of staging a work of such scope and ambition, her directorial vision both meticulous and generous. When Sundance ended its Theatre Program, my connection to SUFFS could have ended too. Instead, I've had the privilege of following the show's journey: from that fall residency in the Berkshires to its acclaimed run at The Public Theater, through its year-long Broadway engagement, and now as it tours the country. My relationship with Leigh has only deepened. Not because we share institutional affiliation, but because we share friendship, values, curiosity and commitment to work that matters.
Eisa
Eisa Davis was also part of that Lab, developing The Essentialisn't, a piece that interrogates what it means to perform Blackness in America, asking its audience directly: "Can you be Black and not perform?" Eisa is a creative omnivore — performer, playwright, musician, scholar — embodying the multidisciplinarity that excites me most. The work premiered at HERE Arts Center this fall, years after its initial development. My connection to Eisa began years earlier when she came through Sundance in various capacities, but it was at MASS MoCA that I truly understood the depth of her artistic vision and the questions she was brave enough to ask.
Lina
And then there's Lina Abyad from that Lab. Lina is one of dozens of Lebanese artists I've been privileged to know and support over the years, but her work exemplifies what moves me. As both theatre-maker and professor, she reaches beyond her immediate sphere, continually creating new work, new conversations. Her work, rooted in Beirut yet speaking to questions that transcend geography, represents artistic practice that refuses to stay contained, that insists on connection across boundaries of language, culture and experience. When I think about that Lab now, what I remember isn't the institution that made it possible, but one conversation among many.
One evening, after dinner, Lina gathered us beside the roaring fireplace at Porches and opened her world to us. That night, we learned what it means to make art from the margins, to center voices that the American theater overlooks.
The Lab was intentionally expansive, bringing together not just the artists developing work but essential voices that deepened every conversation: Kamilah Forbes, a dear friend and producer at the Apollo; Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage, whose presence might have seemed unexpected at a Lab but whose insights proved indispensable; Kai Green, a scholar whose perspective was essential for understanding the suffrage story we were exploring; and CA Johnson, a playwright whose voice added crucial dimensions to our collective inquiry. The Lab, with support from colleagues like Michaela Buccola, Ana Verde and Ebonee Johnson, reflected my curatorial predilections (shaped by my dear friend, Philip Himberg). They were artists we believed in, creating work that demanded attention, that refused easy consumption.
Those gatherings at Sundance became a template for how I now understand all my professional relationships. The pattern repeats: I'm drawn to institutions because of the artists they support or the spaces they create, and what endures are the human connections, not the organizational structures. The same proves true across my work with Videos for Change, Cinereach, Ettijahat-Independent Culture, HB Studio, the Guthrie Theater, and my board service with Zoukak in Beirut.
This understanding comes from spending years in spaces where institutional fragility is visible. Where economic pressures, political shifts and changing priorities can reshape or eliminate programs overnight. Or it's what anyone learns after enough time in the arts: institutions are structures, subject to the needs of boards, funders and market forces. Artists are something else entirely.
Artists are the irreducible core, the reason the structures exist in the first place.
This isn't to diminish the importance of institutional support. Artists need resources, time, space, advocacy. The work of creating conditions where creativity can flourish remains essential. But I've learned to hold institutional relationships more lightly, to invest more deeply in the human connections that transcend org charts.
The artists I've worked with have taught me that sustainable creative careers aren't built on institutional loyalty but on networks of mutual support, shared values and genuine care.
They've shown me that the most important currency doesn’t come from grants or positions but the depth of connection we create with each other. This realization has been both liberating and sobering. Liberating… because it means my worth isn't determined by whether an organization chooses to keep me. Sobering… because it requires me to take responsibility for nurturing relationships not as professional networking but as genuine human connection.
Which brings me back to Leigh. To Eisa. To Lina. These artists continue to shape me, challenge me, inspire me. Not because of institutional framework, but because of who they are and what they create.
The institutions may disappoint, may dissolve, may shift their priorities according to economic or political pressures. But the artists remain. They keep making work. They keep asking questions that matter. They keep building the cultural infrastructure that sustains us. This is what I've learned: invest in the artists, not the institutions. Build relationships based on shared vision, not organizational hierarchy. Trust the creative impulse over the bureaucratic process. And when the institutions inevitably fail or fade, we'll discover that the most important work was happening in the connections all along.
The art is where our real endowment lies. Not in buildings or budgets, but in the inexhaustible creativity, resilience and vision of human beings committed to making something new. That's what endures. That's what I'm learning to trust.
