Each month we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. This month’s featured project is The Dirty Blondes.
As you may know, a lot of the staff members of Fractured Atlas are practicing artists as well as arts administrators. We know many of you wear multiple hats and wanted to showcase a project who does the same. Let’s see what The Dirty Blondes had to say!
Tell us about The Dirty Blondes, your mission, and your team.
The Dirty Blondes was founded by us, Ashley Jacobson & Elizabeth Sarkady, in 2012. We had just produced The American Play in the 2012 Planet Connections Theater Festivity and it did really well! It was our first show together and we received the Outstanding Overall New Production award in the festival — top honors — and secured some really awesome reviews. But we noticed a lot of skepticism about our work together, and even a lot of condescension. A lot of people would come up to us after the show and be like ‘there’s no way YOU did that? You’re so….” It was a lot of sexist nonsense about the types of artists people expected us to be because of our gender and our appearance. It really bothered both of us. We knew we wanted to continue to produce and create together — so The Dirty Blondes was formed as this kind of ‘in-your-face’ theater company challenging people’s expectations of what kind of artists we, other women, and other underestimated groups should be.
Our formal mission is to produce works of theater that foster the right conversation at the right time with the right people.
For us, this mission means that we, as artists, and the artists we collaborate with/produce have a direct stake in the stories we tell and that we’re all contributing to a larger conversation with greater socio-political implications. Basically that the artists take responsibility for what their work says on every level.
Our team is us, the founders, and our incredible associates — Hannah Lemkowitz and Turquoise Olezene — who in addition to being savvy and dedicated marketing and development associates (respectively), are also themselves passionate artists.
What does it mean to you to be “A feminist theater company with a taste for provocation”?
That’s actually a quote that The Secret Theater used to describe us back in 2013 and we liked it so we adopted it for ourselves. We think it means just what it says — we look at ourselves as instigators, conversation starters, provocateurs. We want our work to be enjoyable, sure, but we also want it to be a little jarring and to make people sit up a little straighter. We actually want to keep people asking, ‘how did YOU do that?’
And the feminist part of that quote — is just part of our DNA. Our company is feminist because we as people are feminists- so the work that we do, the work that interests us and that we’re drawn to all have a particular feminist point of view. We’re very embracing of the fact that we’re female in a male-dominated field (hence the slightly gendered name and brand identity) and we actively seek out other women to work with.
What is the most challenging thing or things about making work at the level you make it while having full-time administrative careers?
This is very easy to answer — avoiding burn-out and time management. As full-time arts administrators for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) — our schedules are already packed for at least 40–50 hours of work a week. We just recently started tracking our time on an online app, and we’re both dedicating at least 20–30 hours a week to our Dirty Blondes projects. We HAVE to be talented multitaskers and stick to a strict schedule of timelines, deadlines, and be in CONSTANT communication. Also, almost every artist we collaborate with has a full-time job or works 2 or 3 part-time jobs. It’s a hustle. Everyone’s schedules are packed minute by minute.
When we do find ourselves with a night off, there’s this overwhelming feeling of guilt, like what ELSE should we be working on? Sometimes it feels that things just come so quickly down the pipeline that we can never plan far enough in advance. We’re already talking about projects for April 2017 and feel like that’s JUST enough time to do what we really want to do.
Not to mention that we still need to schedule down time to take care of ourselves, to keep our friendships and see our families.
The biggest threat to this company is if we burn out and can’t do the work anymore. We always have to schedule breaks.
In what ways has managing both of these aspects of your career(s) been surprisingly easy?
Honestly, our friendship makes everything a lot easier. We have a natural rhythm between the two of us that makes constant communication rather seamless. We use email, gchat, Asana, late-night text messages, and every communication method known to man and we understand each other across all platforms. Also — we physically work in the same building, in the same room. It’s very easy for us to pop out for a coffee or lunch to chat about the company while we’re knee-deep in work for BAM.
And honestly, BAM is one of the best employers for artists that we can think of. Not only is it a great community for artists on stage, but also for the people that work there. We met each other because of BAM, and there are a lot of perks that come with that. Our supervisors are very supportive of our company and allow us a certain level of flexibility that keep us working at our best. BAM has been an incredible resource to us in a lot of ways.
What made you feel now was the time in the company’s growth to host a benefit? Why choose this type of fundraiser?
We haven’t hosted a fundraising event in the past. We’ve done crowdfunding, sure, but we wanted to do so much more than that this time. We know exactly how much money we need to raise to have a really successful 2016/17 season, and we wanted to raise that money through a show that we would be really proud of — instead of just asking for support — once again. If we can reach our goal for this benefit — we know exactly what we will be able to accomplish next year — so it’s a really really exciting event.
It just feels like the right time to both celebrate where we’ve been and where we’re going. This benefit is a look at who we are as a company, sharing some of our favorite past work, the work of some of the artists we’ve been so lucky to work, and a glimpse of the projects we have in mind for the future. It’s kind of like a ‘Greatest Hits’ of The Dirty Blondes but with a firm look on the future.
We’ve grown a lot, and learned a lot as producers and the company feels like it’s in a really stable and healthy position, and in fact, on the precipice of some great growth — both artistically and organizationally.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a project looking to produce a benefit of their own?
Treat the benefit like a show instead of a fundraiser — the emphasis should still be on the value of the art and the experience of the audience. Make sure that you are providing your audience with an evening that you are proud of and that will inspire them to give to your organization, to make them want to see what you can do in the future. It should be the best possible one-night event you could think of.
Oh, and book your venue as soon as possible — that’s going to be your biggest expense and a pretty deciding factor in what kind of event you can have, all the way down to whether or not you can serve alcohol or have an auction. So give yourself as much time as possible to find the venue that works the best for you.
How have you approached building relationships with your collaborators? How do you ensure that they are connected to your mission?
This is an on-going learning process for us. Our collaborators are everything to us. We are definitely a company with an ‘artist first’ value system and we hope that comes off with our every interaction. We always want to be inspiring the trust of our collaborators — creatively and professionally.
We want our collaborators to know that we believe in them and that we have what it takes to present their work in the best possible way. We look at the job of a producer as more of a resource than anything and we always ask ‘what do you need from us to make this vision work?” If we can’t get them what they need, we are honest and upfront about our challenges and then work creatively to come up with exciting other options.
We have also been successful in finding artists that intuitively connect to what we’re saying as a company. We don’t aggressively push an agenda onto our artists — they tend to come to us and say ‘how can I help?’ and I think that’s what so great. We all show up at the table saying ‘”how can we help?”. We always hope to foster that kind of creative environment which just seems to be a natural breeding ground for great and honest work.
Anything else you’d like us all to know?
We’d love to fill the room with artists at our benefit on May 9th! The community provided by Fractured Atlas is so important to us so we hope some of you will consider attending the benefit at The Gene Frankel Theatre in Manhattan on Monday, May 9th. You can get a ticket to the show by contributing to our benefit here: www.thedirtyblondes.org.
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