When most people leave a job, particularly one they’ve held for a number of years, an exit interview is usually part of the routine. I don’t know what the team at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills is doing on their end. I felt with the upcoming departure of Artistic Director Paul Crewes, I would conduct my own exit interview with him.
What became immediately clear is that Crewes, who has been artistic director at The Wallis since 2015, is not leaving because of a falling out with the organization. Nor did another job offer come through as it did with Kristy Edmunds at CAP UCLA. Nor is it retirement as is the case with Michael Ritchie leaving Center Theatre Group.
“This exodus is not something that was me thinking it’s time to go,” Crewes told me earlier this week in a Zoom call. “But more to do with the fact that we had to respond to what was happening back in the UK with the family and decided that that was the thing we had to do. So it’s very bittersweet from my point of view to be leaving.”
Not that he’s going to just up and disappear. In fact, The Wallis has asked for his continued help into the middle of next year.
“They’ve asked me to stay on as an adviser for six months,” he revealed, “which I’m very happy to do. I’ll be working from the UK, although potentially visiting once or twice in the first six months and next year and helping in any way I can to transition to the next person.”
Whoever comes in to replace Crewes will have to consider the seismic shifts that are taking place in culture as it relates to representation – on stage and off, cancel culture and more. Something Crewes has been considering for quite some time.
“There had to be change within within the arts. There had to be change within the culture of the country as well. Those changes are never going to be easy and they will question and put into question everything that you do. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. You have to work out where you stand within that context and you have to make the changes you believe you need to make. I think some of those changes won’t come easily if there’s no pressure for us to make change.”
He pauses and then considers what his role as a white, middle-aged man might be in both the problem and the solution to these problems.
“I’m of an older generation, maybe, which needs to rethink how we’ve been doing things for a long time. I think that we’re in a place where serious conversations need to happen and change needs to take place. The reality is we’ve lived in a world where one voice has been strongest for a long, long time. That’s going to be an uncomfortable conversation with that one voice. I fully represent that world, you know, being who I am. So I have to I have to be prepared to step back and listen and change.”
When asked what else he plans to do once he he returns home, Crewes was keeping his cards close to his vest.
“I’m keeping my counsel on a little bit there because I actually want to give myself time to think that through. We live in the Yorkshire Dales. I’ll go on long walks with my wife and the dog and just have a moment to recalibrate. I think projects are what drives me, not necessarily running an organization or an institution or a company, although I do enjoy that as well.”
His role as an adviser will allow Crewes to continue work on a long-gestating new version of William Shakespeare’s King Lear with Joe Morton (Turn Me Loose) in the title role.
“We had, in fact, our last day of a reading of King Lear. We’re also looking at the conceptual design of this project, which was going to be presented at the Wallis in May. That’s a project that I’ve been working on with Joe Morton and John Gould Rubin for nearly three years now due to the pandemic. Focusing on that project and really exploring how we can tell that story and present it in a way in 2022 that maybe hasn’t made sense before really excites me.“
So far The Wallis has been able to navigate the pandemic well. They are also closing out this calendar year, and with it the Paul Crewes era, with the hugely successful return of Love Actually Live, allows him to leave with his head held high.
“I’m feeling quite positive at the moment that we have opened Love Actually. We’ve had three dance companies in the building since September. We’ve had four concerts and we’ve had a Film Independent program. So we’ve covered all the different genres that we want to work in. We’ve managed to pull it off and it’s been great to do it.
“Even in COVID we’ve managed to achieve a box office target that we’ve never done before. So in a sense I suppose I feel it’s rounding my role here at The Wallis. It feels the right time to go. I would have hated leaving before we were able to get back into the theater and do the work that we’ve been doing. What the future holds? I don’t know. I mean, it’s the first time in 36 years of working that I’m leaving a job without knowing what the next job is.”
Love Actually Live runs through December 31st at The Wallis.
King Lear is scheduled to run at The Wallis May 10th – June 5th.
All photos of Paul Crewes by Luke Fontana/Courtesy The Wallis