Field Alert: Change Afoot at TCG
A Letter From Ben Cameron
March 27, 2006
Dear TCG Members,
As you all know, I have had the immense privilege and great joy of serving as your Executive Director since 1998. This chapter in my life has been far more fulfilling than I could ever have imagined: you have embraced TCG during these last eight years with enthusiasm and generosity, and your warmth to me in particular has been far greater than I could ever have predicted or, I sometimes fear, ever deserved.
I have always believed that TCG could only benefit from a periodic change of leader, a change that could infuse the organization with new energy and invigorate it in new ways. It was for this reason that I informed the Board at the date of my hire that, while I looked forward to our journey together, I could not imagine staying even for a decade. If I did my job well, we (and I mean the staff, the board and the membership together) would move the organization forward in significant ways, finding a new, stronger sense of community, defining our collective destiny more rigorously, and taking steps through the creation of new programs, activities and initiatives to move towards that stronger vision of theatre in America: indeed, if I did my work really well, we would have a stronger TCG, one that would be immensely attractive to a successor, clear enough in its vision to continue on a focused and strategic journey, yet flexible enough to respond to, and incorporate, the vision, the priorities, the skills and the talents of a new Executive Director.
In the last year, I have increasingly sensed that my work here was coming to a sort of fruition, and indeed that opportunities for the organization—opportunities that would demand a new multi-year commitment from a leader—were now looming on the horizon. I drew a firm line in the sand, predicting a departure no later than 2008, even while acknowledging that, if an extraordinary opportunity arose earlier, I could leave before that date. As a result, the TCG Board formed a Succession Committee in 2005 to deal with my inevitable departure, and that committee, led superbly by Ben Moore of the Seattle Repertory Theatre, has already met and moved forward to prepare for transition.
Clearly, as you will have sensed, I am writing you now to tell you that such a moment is upon us.
With the greatest of excitement, I am pleased to tell you that the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) has extended an invitation for me to join their ranks as Program Director for the Arts. The Foundation, as you know, has been an extraordinary partner to the theatre field, funding field-wide conversations in 1999 and again in 2006, and (with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) co-funding the New Generations Program, now in its sixth round. In 2005, we all recognized DDCF’s importance to the field by awarding them the TCG Foundation Award at our national conference in Seattle. The opportunity they have now generously offered allows me to return to the grantmaking arena, where I had been active both at the NEA and at Dayton Hudson/Target Stores in earlier chapters in my life. It allows me to work with multiple fields, to experience again the joy in understanding multiple disciplines, each from their own perspective—a joy I experienced in my earlier grantmaking days and that has resonated more recently in our work with the Performing Arts Research Coalition and the American Arts Alliance. And it allows me to return to the world of being a grant maker, freshly armed with a real and immediate sense of what it means to be a grant seeker.
Frankly, this opportunity for a rewarding post-TCG life came sooner than I had anticipated, but the extraordinary opportunity, combined with the current strength of TCG itself, made it irresistible to me. I will leave TCG at the end of our current fiscal year in June. TCG Managing Director Joan Channick—the woman I have always heralded as the single greatest thing to happen to TCG during my tenure—will lead the organization in the interim as the Board, led by President Abel Lopez, searches for my successor. The role I have occupied IS a fantastic position: I leave the organization at a moment of great strength, with a superb staff and an extraordinary board. This is a proverbial plum for the picking: I urge any of you so inclined to seriously consider throwing your name into the mix at the appropriate moment.
At a similar moment of transition just months ago, Gigi Bolt of the NEA wrote a letter of unparalleled elegance and eloquence, outlining her experience with the field as a prelude to her departure. I could never match those wonderful words—and indeed, you have to keep listening to me through field letters, an editorial and a set of remarks at some point at the national conference in Atlanta. In the meantime, let me say, of all the things I have treasured about our time together, I have valued most those moments of deepest candor—those searingly honest moments where you all shared with me and with one another our concerns, our triumphs, our challenges—and I have been moved by the considered, generous ways in which you have heard and listened to one another. I hope that this dynamic of honest expression and generous listening is a legacy that will always be central to TCG and that will continue to bind us together, even as the future now pulls me in a new direction.
All the best to you all, as always.
Ben Cameron
Executive Director