UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Each year, Penn State plays host to dozens of artists from a variety of backgrounds. Visitors can see anything from touring musical productions to interactive arts displays. But those shows don’t just stumble upon the Eisenhower Auditorium. Amy Dupain Vashaw, the Center for the Performing Arts’ director for audience and program development, works with her team to find and invite programs that will educate and connect the local community.
Vashaw started as a Penn State student studying film. She said she planned, at first, to become a critic in New York City. But after some time away — working for an off-Broadway theater, a presenting organization focused on contemporary dance, and a few more places — she returned to Penn State and joined the Center for the Performing Arts.
Now, Vashaw has brought shows and performances to Penn Staters for more than 27 years. She met with Penn State News to discuss her work.
Q: What does it mean to be director of audience and programming development?
Vashaw: A primary responsibility of mine is curating the season of performing artists that we invite to Penn State, in partnership with CPA staff and collaborators. That includes the process of choosing what gets shown and what gets invited here. We are an arts-presenting organization, distinct from an arts-producing organization. We curate a season of extant, touring performing artists from all around the world to come here and perform and engage. We program a multi-disciplinary season somewhere in the range of 20 programs.
I always say arts presenting is the “invisible hand.” We're happy to be behind the scenes, opening the door to let people in to set up their performance. Everything is a partnership; nothing that happens is because of just us.
Q: How do you choose which shows to invite to Penn State?
Vashaw: We have to see what’s out there. We were just at a conference in New York City, for example, where we went to see as much work as we possibly could, to consider, ‘Does it make sense for us in our context?’ We’re trying to look at the best way to use the venues we operate in, including Eisenhower Auditorium, to highlight each performance. Not every show will make sense with 2,500 people seated in the red chairs. Some might have the audience onstage and engaging directly, or there might be other ways to experience it. We might look at other partner organizations we can tap into, such as the Recital Hall on campus.
We also send out a survey to visitors and ask for feedback, and based on the feedback we get, we can refine and change things to meet the needs of the community.
Q: How do you incorporate student life and engagement into the performances?
Vashaw: I oversee an engagement team, which works on student and community engagement, education and opportunities. I would say that the largest part of my job is engagement, but there are a lot of parts. If you imagine a vase, and you put the big rocks — the performances — inside, and then you fill in space with smaller rocks — other events and engagement. That covers a lot of what I do.
We can invite people to learn through field trips and class visits, or master classes with the artists who are performing with us. Those are the low-hanging fruit. Dancers, for example, go to a dance master class, because that’s what they're studying. For some professional touring artists, it could be something a little more complex, like an art exchange or the “Joyfull” series, which is a performance and a cultural exchange through food and community building.
Q: What shows have been your favorite to bring to Penn State over the years?
Vashaw: It is so, so difficult to choose a favorite. There have been amazing artists, doing incredible engagement work, as well as off-the-charts performances. My personal favorite performance on the stage has been Soweto Gospel Choir. Their spirit, heart, resilience, and the sound of songs in so many different languages fills my soul up like no other artist can.
As for engagement work, we presented 'The Nile Project' in 2015, which is a performance and series of workshops created by Mina Girgis, a California-based ethnomusicologist. The idea was to bring together musicians from the 11 nations bordering the Nile River, who don’t share the same musical traditions, time signatures or even the same instruments, to create a new sound of music that demonstrates the magic that can happen when people get together with a unified purpose. We were able to partner with the Institute for Energy and the Environment, the Borough of State College, the co.space, the Schreyer Honors College, and many others to spread a message of unity.
Q: What are the advantages to art presentation work at Penn State?
Vashaw: Where we are is quite advantageous. We’re between two big cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and we program midweek, which is how we're able to keep things affordable. Shows are usually on a Tuesday to avoid competing with other events, which means you're not taking a Saturday away from the artist. Their Saturday performance can be in a big city where they're going to attract thousands.
When we have an event, there may not be thousands of people who come. At the end, there may have only been 350 involved, but it’s not always about the sheer numbers. A lot of the time, the programming is about depth, connection and community building. We bring in programming that builds on equity and allyship, accessibility, and all of that. Once the audience is in the room, that's when the magic can happen. There’s an opportunity to open your ears and your heart and realize that human connection.
Q: How do you invite people in to make those connections?
Vashaw: We are in the business of bringing people together to share a human, communal experience in-person for live theater, so we try to approach accessibility in a lot of different ways. We recently decided to look at our ticket prices and to talk to people who visited about their experience with us. We looked at our shows to see if we could open up different options for people who weren’t interested in evenings, and we’re starting to vary some show start times to accommodate a wide range of schedules.
We’re constantly thinking about what we can do to make ourselves more accessible and to provide a better experience to every single person we encounter, no matter what the situation is. We're still working on it. We'll always be ‘still working on it.’ But we try to learn and adapt.