Every performing arts venue likes to advertise what’s new and exciting for their season launch. For CAP UCLA, they truly had a lot to crow about. Their new performing arts space in Westwood, The Nimoy, opened in September. They are also starting the 2023-2024 with their new Executive and Artistic Director Edgar Miramontes. He replaces Kristy Edmunds who left in 2021 for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. It was Edmunds who first came up with the idea of buying the former Crest Theater in 2018 and turning it into a performing arts venue.

Miramontes, who had previously served as deputy executive director and curator at REDCAT since 2019, inherits a lot of firsts and a lot of challenges. The performing arts haven’t fully recovered from the COVID crisis and audiences haven’t returned in anywhere near the same numbers as before the pandemic. Accessibility in the arts has become a big issue as has representation.

This gave us a lot to talk about when I spoke with Miramontes in mid-October. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How much does your experience at REDCAT inform what you want to bring to CAP UCLA?

REDCAT was incredibly formative in terms of the kind of artistic, adventurous kind of programing that is the ethos of my own interests and supporting artists. It is, and has been. an artist-centered space. Seeing what artists are doing to say a story a different way using interdisciplinary approaches is something that I’m still interested quite a bit to think about.

CAP UCLA is a larger platform for the kinds of work, just given the size of the stage and the limitations and the types of spaces that CAP UCLA has. So to think about the kind of ethos for me to develop artists from just out of school and into kind of their professional careers, that continues to interest me. The more artists stay in Los Angeles, the better.

Is there more pressure to be successful at CAP UCLA than there was at REDCAT? Are the standards of what defines success different between the two venues?

It depends, really, how one defines success. There’s a lot of incredible support that the School of Arts and Architecture, which is where CAP UCLA sits under, for me and my ideas thinking about how a public institution has a responsibility to expand and serve different publics. Including, of course, the the L.A. area and beyond.

With The Nimoy in particular, I think it does offer additional support towards that vision. I’m quite excited to think about The Nimoy as a pilot for how a center for art and creation and for artists can be utilized to think broadly about the arts and culture that UCLA as a system can affect. 

The biggest challenge every arts institution faces right now is getting people back into the theater. One argument that I’ve made for quite some time is that accessibility is a key factor in that. It isn’t just getting beyond COVID. It’s making it accessible to people who can’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars for an evening of theater. What impresses me the most about The Nimoy is that a single person can go see a show and park at The Nimoy for $35.

That’s absolutely right. A lot of that was set up with the wonderful team that I get to work with now. Who comes and parks for $3 in Los Angeles? Tickets are $32, a little less than that.

Accessibility to me is also beyond just tickets. What does it look like to be accessible for others who may have been hearing-impaired? How does one actually think about accessibility as we move forward? As we re-enter these spaces?

I am dealing with the three spaces that we program at CAP UCLA. [Royce Hall, The Theatre at the Ace Hotel, The Nimoy] All historic theaters, all built within a certain time. Physical accessibility was really different. That’s a line of thinking which I’m approaching programing in general to think about what that might look like in terms of accessibility.

What’s the conversation that you and your team has to have with an artist or their representatives that says there’s this theater and it has this price point model and it’s smaller so you’ll probably can fill it? Or there’s this theater that has a broader price point that we can do, but you may not necessarily fill it. What is the power of persuasion that you employ to convince somebody that doing something on a smaller scale may actually be more interesting, more rewarding, if not necessarily more economically rewarding?

I’ve yet to move into those negotiations. I start programing now for the fall of ’24. It’s a lot of leading with the artist’s interests. I’m pursuing work that I think would be able to fit multiple spaces in different ways, but also developing an artist that can work in multiple spaces. 

I think artists can find ways to work in multiple ways. With The Nimoy what’s really interesting to me is to think about that you can experiment more. Some of the artists who are working on these larger scale [works] can test out an idea at The Nimoy that then moves potentially into Royce Hall. I think artists are always happy to think about ways of moving their art in a different direction or being pushed to a limitation where limitation becomes the opportunity to think about their work a different way.

You’re obviously establishing a new brand as part of CAP UCLA with The Nimoy. Does that mean that The Nimoy is front and center and takes priority over programing that might take place at the other venues?

Certainly I feel like this is the year of The Nimoy. I think a lot of artists are really curious to see what it can do. It’s a space that CAP UCLA has much more of control over. Royce and ACE are really great partnerships. We can think about The Nimoy as the space for much more development of new work. We can do a lot more with access to it, as ours, in a different way than these other two venues. 

We’re having this conversation on the heels of of really horrific events taking place in the Middle East. We’re also doing it on the cusp of an election cycle. What do you think from your personal perspective is the role of the arts in troubled times like these?

If anything, the arts and culture have the power to really to provide multiple perspectives on what is happening. I think it also has the ability to inspire action. I think artists have a history of participating and making work that is directly pointing to, or at least addressing, some of these issues that I think are quite important. I’m interested in thinking quite a bit about the kinds of voices that have not been necessarily at the center and to think about different perspectives that address some of these things.

More and more I find that the work needs to connect what it’s saying and who is saying it to how do you provide an additional platform for conversation to happen right after that. We need artists as leaders, as catalysts, to make work that is entertaining, but also you see something that you’ve never seen before that actually does shift something for you and for those who are experiencing it. On an intellectual level, on an emotional level, but also has a social impact perspective.

I spoke to Kristy Edmunds in January of 2021. She talked about how she felt like it had been her role to keep artists strong and inspired during the pandemic. I asked her what she did to keep herself strong and inspired. She said, “Artists are finding these places where somehow the glue in the cracks is a kind of kindness and compassion and a willingness to manifest some form of connection. That is ultimately what is going to be what the tail end of this is.”

We don’t know where we are now, but what do you see as the North Star for you in keeping yourself and artists strong and inspired as we move through whatever the next five years is going to throw at us?

I think that we need to think about ourselves as being interconnected to all things. I think that we need to think outside of our silos to be much more like artists: take risks, learn new ideas, research the things that you’re interested in, taking time to see that idea in multiple ways. It means that we need to find ways to redefine collaboration so that it’s, to some degree, less competitive. To think about an ethos of artists, producers, presenters, imagining a new way of working together. Also thinking about what are those values that we can set so that we can build something together. Artists have been doing that for a long time. It’s also leaning in for people who are producers or presenters to think with artistic practice and that means administratively.

I would love to see a festival for two weeks with a vibrancy that you see across the city. That we have multiple connections and in which artists are moving through a different way through these particular spaces. It’s international, it’s local, it’s national; all of these things. And it’s incredibly inclusive. That’s my aspiration of the North Star. But certainly that’s what keeps me going.

Main Photo: The Nimoy Theatre (Photo by Jason Williams/Courtesy CAP UCLA)

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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

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We spoke on December 15th as 2020 was nearing its end; the Covid crisis was escalating instead of diminishing; a new president had been elected and three weeks before the turmoil that shocked the world on January 6th.

Last week we got an update on CAP UCLA’s remaining events in their 2020-2021 season when it was announced on January 15th that all previously scheduled live events for this season had been cancelled. Not a surprise after what Edmunds told me.

What follows are excerpts from that conversation which have been edited for length and clarity.

When we spoke in March you said that it was important on an emotional and structural level to have a future time you can work towards. How have you managed the constantly shifting realities of the pandemic and how that impacts your ability to put a schedule together?

You know what I did at the beginning, I think you fall forward towards your biggest values. It clarifies things, at least for me. I had to pull my mind towards what is it we can do. What is my top priority? I decided early on to start initiating commissions, as in micro-commissions, commission with a small “c,” to as many different artists as we could to manifest different kinds of work.

What are you seeing as the cultural response, particularly in the creation of new material, to this past year?

There’s a lot of pretty deep soul searching. What is the work that feels the most necessary? Not necessarily my next idea, but what do I have to offer into this dialogue now where this economy is profoundly altered. I think many of them – and it depends on the art form – what are the stories that need to be told that help the public find a way back together. They are composing and making and thinking. You watch artists really authentically try to invent how they can contribute their artistry in a different way, which is revealing their humanity in a different way. There’s been a lot of really remarkable results.

Our biggest concern is how we put our bodies back together and try to hold a stage in a meaningful way. An audience is going to be ready to see us at top speed. It will take us a while to get there.

Over the past four years we’ve had an administration in place that essentially actively tried to defund the arts. With the Biden administration how do you expect the dialogue between government and the performing arts to change?

I think we’ll have some ears on that this time around. One of the biggest pieces that will fall forward in this is how do we now work on creating a national cultural policy. How do we look at the roll government does – and can – play in how artists are at the table for social and cultural belonging? We play a pretty substantial role in the grief of a nation coming back together in a much more compassionate way. That cultural policy and how we are valued for what we generate into a national and global community matters.

Our activity accrues benefits to society adjacent to us. Meaning, we seek money to sustain our practices. What we spend it on, and what our activities generate, benefits businesses peripherally and interdependent on us. The more we are put back into activation with a baseline support for that activation, it helps a recovery where adjacent interlocking things benefit along with us.

Can and will the arts fully recover from the pandemic? If so, what will it take?

In the health department updates I get, it will likely be unevenly distributed based on what part of the country we live in. It’s pretty clear that most of us, larger venues or anything with 200 or more people, are being strongly encouraged to look at early 2022 as to when we’ll probably have some more mobility of gathering to some scale. That’s a long time. Ticket revenues make up 50-75% of most organizations’ annual budget. That is eviscerated and will continue to be. The economic fallout will be much larger and longer. It’s probably an additional three years before you see something rebound.

When you look back on 2020, what were the best things to come out of the pandemic?

One of the best things was the way in which colleagues and organizations across the spectrum – from small tiny community cultural spaces up to the grand halls – we started sharing ideas, problem-solving, working on contract language, connections. You’re always reasonably pivoted within your profession and your eco-system to collaborate in service to one another in the big picture. How can we keep a cultural framework functioning? How can we keep each other persisting? How can we help each other overcome denial? How can we share strategies? A lot of those things were a really remarkable piece of it.

You told KCET during the Tune-In Festival that one thing that was important about the festival was to “ignite the public to stay strong and feel inspired.” How have you ignited yourself to do the same thing?

For me it’s about continuing to be in lockstep with what artists are doing. I can have a conversation with an artist, who is as profoundly distraught as I might be, but in that conversation we are able to reignite one another, to keep trying, to find a form, to change what that might be and keep trying.

I was talking to a dancer and she said live performance isn’t happening right now, but the dance is still alive. Artists are going “How do we keep collaborating and work with each other?” Artists are finding these places where somehow the glue in the cracks is a kind of kindness and compassion and a willingness to manifest some form of connection. That is ultimately what is going to be what the tail end of this is. We’ve been able to stand in solidarity with people and say we are here as part of what this is. We are able stand in front of a country that doesn’t understand our practice, but did find out that they actually missed us.

CAP UCLA’s upcoming streaming programs includes an already-running concert with saxophone legend Charles Lloyd (available through January 31st); Douglas J. Cuomo’s Seven Limbs featuring Nels Cline and the Aizuri Quartet (available February 12th) and Israel Galván Maestro de Barra on March 6th.

Photo of Kristy Edmunds by Lovis Ostenrick/Courtesy CAP UCLA

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Throughout the pandemic, they have created nine original music videos that have been released throughout the year. During this event they will revisit those videos, explore their significance to Tonality and how they came into being. This concert marks the culmination of their 2020 virtual season.

What We Will Be will feature the world premiere of a new work by composer Shawn Kirchner. He collaborated with Tonality on a new composition that at first is set to the words of America the Beautiful. But he soon moves onto lyrics that explore our country’s history through a different, and more accurate, lens.

Social justice issues are front and center with Tonality. They have collaborated with composers Reena Esmail, Moira Smiley and Alex Wurman in addition to Kirchner. They have also performed with a wide range of other artists including Laura Downes, Taylor Mac and Pete Townsend.

None of this would matter if the music wasn’t good. And it is. Very. That’s why people like Kristy Edmunds of CAP UCLA is on their Board of Directors and included the ensemble in their Tune-In Festival in October.

Tickets for What We Will Be: A Benefit Concert for Tonality are $20 and can be purchased here. The event begins at 10:00PM EST/7:00PM PST.

Update: This post has been updated with the correct start time of 7:00 PM PST/10:00 PM EST. Cultural Attaché regrets the error.

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Ladysmith Black Mambazo is the South African male choral group probably best known for their collaboration with Paul Simon on Graceland. The ensemble has been together for over 50 years. They are the recipients of 5 Grammy Awards.

The group was originally scheduled to play earlier in the year at Royce Hall, but their founder, Joseph Shabalala, passed away in February. Their concerts rescheduled, Ladysmith Black Mambazo returned from his funeral in South Africa to continue their tour as Shabalala had wanted. But the realities of the COVID-19 virus meant another round of cancellations.

The concert that will be streamed on Thursday took place on March 16th and was shot with three cameras. This is the same concert they would have performed had circumstances been different.

Here’s how to watch it. You can see it on KCRW’s Facebook and YouTube pages. You can also listen to it on KCRW.

Photo of Ladysmith Black Mambazo from their Royce Hall Concert by Phinn Sriployrung/Courtesy of CAP UCLA

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When I spoke to Edmunds on Wednesday, March 18th by phone, it would be another full day before the Metropolitan Opera in New York cancelled the rest of their season. Other venues have since started to make similar announcements.

These are edited excerpts (for length and clarity) from my conversation with Edmunds.

Before getting into the practical part of the world in which we find ourselves, after working so hard to put together your 2019-2020 season, how did you and your team navigate the emotional part of seeing it come apart?

It was certainly one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I think, if I understand the community and our fans and audience enough, as hard as this it, it is a line that at least creates some clarity that allows us to redirect our energy into the things we need to do. Which is cope, keep ourselves healthy and safe and protect the community. Then look out to the future differently. It was really really hard.

This is a team of people who are doers, as all of us are in the arts. Part of it is scrambling to go, “there must be something else we can do; there must be something can do for our fans, our artists,” so you start sequencing that. We realized we were heading to the whole of the season. I had a chance to prepare my team so that announcement was something we can do with less chaos.

You were the first performing arts organization in Los Angeles to announce the suspension of the entire remaining part of your season. What, if any, conversations did you have with other institutions about their long-term plans and is there a consensus amongst other venues that this is the inevitable path going forward?

I’ve been in conversations with colleague organizations small, medium and large; locally, statewide, West Coast, nationally and internationally. Because I am at UCLA, an institution that has academics, research, a hospital and more, we were part of preparedness planning. I felt it was imperative to speak with colleagues who wouldn’t have that information about what the government – state or city – would be doing. Everyone will speak to what their own duty of care and community is needed and to their operating models. But we try to be in touch regularly.

Beyond suspending the season, what does this do to your artists, many of whom are on tours?

When a performance project cancels or when it is suspended, and I’m now speaking broadly, it tends to be in the contract that the performers are paid when they complete the performance. Wanting to get on the front foot to address that, let’s begin rescheduling. If everyone is up for that, that’s what we’ll be doing. We’re already involved with protecting and structuring dates. However uncertain future dynamics will be, it allows a future time we can work towards. On an emotional and structural level that is important.

There are some other things that are probably not unique to us, but there is a sequence of determinations that had to do with international performers about to land in the United States or were already here and they were working their way to Los Angeles. We had Ladysmith Black Mambazo returning back from their memorial services in South African for the death of their founder (Joseph Shabalala). They are in grief, but feel it is an absolute duty to carry on their music as he wanted. When they returned to the United States, they landed in Cincinnati who announced urgently they were cancelled. They didn’t even know the venue they were headed to had cancelled. I said to the tour manager, “You’re coming here, whatever you need.” On Monday we had them on the Royce Hall stage performing and we filmed it and will get it to people. It was a way to let them do spiritually and structurally what their mentor and founder had asked them to do. They are now in transit back and they have not yet landed as I speak to you now.

How do you see the role of the arts once this crisis has passed?

How do I say it? Artists and theatre makers and musicians and performing arts and visual media and everything, essentially we’ve always been working on some way to give form to an essentialness that we offer. We do that out of a professional call to our practices. I keep thinking about we’re all going to experience these new contours when we get back together as a community as very differently ravaged and all impacted human beings. And in that time period, I feel like then it is going to be our turn to support that essentialness that the arts have provided far differently than we ever have before.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” In our world today, what would you suggest those of us who love the arts do while we all wait this out?

I don’t want to sound too esoteric, but honestly, the arts have always helped us practice who we are in relation to it. It helps us practice who are with that which is other or like in the moment that we are there. We can still practice that before we needed to understand ourselves in this moment. I feel like reflecting on that artistry that mattered a lot to us and talking about it and using it for its inspiration and resilience and prescientness is useful to us. We practiced how we encountered that feeling in a fictional environment and now in a very real set of environments. And that’s useful. It’s useful to communicate hither and yon the importantance the arts play in our national fabric.

The other thing is we are going to need all matter of shekels to come forward, wherever possible, to get on the other side. You want to make sure people are in place when we come roaring back with a community that is going to be differently attenuated and hopefully craving our offer.

Photo of Kristy Edmunds by Reed Hutchinson (Courtesy of CapUCLA)

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