The flooding, which wasn’t supposed to happen after costly renovations completed in October 2015 ($46.5 million) was just one more unexpected hurdle to be negotiated for Gladden who is more or less a walking history book of challenges, adversities and triumphs for the Alley over the last almost two decades.
Tuesday, Gladden announced he is retiring by the end of June 2025 after 19 years at the Alley as Managing Director. What he wants to be remembered for, he said in an interview with the Houston Press, is that he has always worked to support the arts.
“The most important thing is supporting the artistic product. And every major capital campaign that we’ve done has as a priority investing in the artistic product. The second would be the renovation of the theater and all the technical capabilities that we can now do that we couldn’t do before.
“To have a real fly loft, to have real side stages to have a trap room, all that has made a difference and the theater is more intimate than it was before. The relationship of the actor to the audience is much more intimate.” Theater acoustics got a big upgrade as well, he said, adding that the old acoustics “were terrible.”
It was the Alley Theatre’s need for an upgrade that first brought Gladden to Houston, to oversee a big capital campaign to renovate the theater. .
“We [Gladden and his wife Jane] had just become empty nesters in Cleveland. And I’d been at the Cleveland Playhouse for 20 years. So I said to Jane, ‘I think it’s time for a new adventure.’ So we came down.
“We kicked off the campaign in the fall of 2008. Just as the market collapsed,” he deadpans. “We were not going to raise any money in 2008, 2009. So what we did was we pulled back the campaign and then we spent more time on planning the construction project. We had a good three and a half years under our belt of planning.”
Once they finally got the needed funds and the final go-ahead for the extensive renovation of the theater, they had 14 months to get the work done.
“Think about that. $46-and-a-half million you’re going to spend. You’re going to leave the roof open during hurricane season. And you’ve got to get that building done,” Gladden remembered. “And we did it on time and on budget and paid for it with no debt.
“So no, you can’t panic when things happen. You just can’t.”
Gladden in hard hat walking a group through the extensive renovations underway in 2015 at Alley Theatre.
Photo by Margaret Downing
All staff — front of house and back of house — had been consulted on what their dream theater would look like. The result was 24 pages of a single-spaced wish list, Gladden said. There was careful consideration of how to avoid the flooding devastation caused by Tropical Storm Allison in its two sweeps through the city in 2001.
However, two years after the renovations, those protections put in place were no match for the massive downpour created during Hurricane Harvey which did $26 million in damage, concentrated in the lower level Neuhaus Theatre as well as thousands of props, dressing rooms and the lobby section. The world premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night had to be moved off site and its destroyed set had to be rebuilt.
Gladden got on the phone to University of Houston officials and was able to secure the use of the small theater at UH so the show could go on. “We built the set in a few days. We premiered that play and it went to New York and that November it won the Obie for Best New Play in America. If we hadn’t gotten that show up then they would have premiered it and we wouldn’t have gotten the credit.
“We got in here two days after [Harvey hit] and found out if was flooded and were completely surprised because Allison had come in through the tunnels and we had a submarine door so I didn’t expect that we’d have a problem,. But it came in a different way and flooded 15 feet high in the basement and ten feet high in the theater. And all of our new electrical through the building.
“So the first thing we did was hire immediately on that Monday Bellows [Construction] the general contractor and all the subs so we could beat everybody else in town. We had them all under contract that first day. That was the most important thing.”
Other details followed. The staff would have to relocate. “I’ve got like 80 people in offices I have to move,” Gladden said. He was the head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau at the time and knew they had moved their offices to the Houston First building. So they had all these empty offices “We did a deal. We moved in on Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.”
“And then we were able to get Blackmon Mooring to come and start pumping us out. on Tuesday. And by Thursday you could at least slosh through the building and see what the damage was. At the first meeting with the Alley’s board of directors a week later, Gladden appealed for help in reaching General Electric to get their electrical system redone and were able to get things accomplished in six weeks instead of the normal three months, he said. And getting all that done by Thanksgiving weekend so we could open Christmas Carol.”
In 2018, Gladden was the face of the Alley when he issued a statement apologizing for the theater not being transparent about the abrupt departure of former Artistic Director Gregory Boyd. The Alley had declined to answer questions about why Boyd suddenly left even though he had several years left on his contract. What came to light was that there had been accusations from several actresses and staff that Boyd had engaged in abusive behavior and had made unwanted sexual advances to some. Gladden promised a change in how the theater dealt with workplace complaints in the future.
And then there was COVID-19 which by March 2020 suspended artistic operations throughout town. During the two years that followed Gladden is credited by the Alley with retaining as many employees as possible even though there was no income. Members of its Resident Acting Company maintained year-round employment which according to the Alley were the only Actors Equity members to do so at any regional or Broadway theater in this country.
On Tuesday, the Alley put out a press statement that included a long list of financial achievements during the years Gladden has been managing director. When he came to the Alley the Houston theater was facing an $800,000 deficit. “The Alley now boasts financial reserves exceeding $5 million.” The operating budget has doubled. Its Summer Chills murder mystery series has increased its annual revenue by 370 percent from 2007 to 2024.
Alley Artistic Director Rob Melrose wrote: ““I feel so lucky to have worked in partnership with Dean Gladden these past six years. Dean retires as a true legend in the American Theatre, having expertly guided the Alley through some of the most challenging times imaginable including a hurricane and a global pandemic. As his partner, I have benefited greatly from his unwavering support of the art, his commitment to fiscal responsibility, his passion for pushing himself and his teammates to new heights, his tireless fundraising, as well as his strategic mind. He deeply cares about the Alley, and I know that even after his retirement, he will continue to be the Alley’s lifelong friend and greatest advocate.”
Acknowledging that few people decide they’ll get into the business side of the arts when they are children, Gladden recounted his somewhat winding path that got him to where he is today. He was a music major— a percussionist — with a bachelor’s degree in music education from Miami University in Ohio. He managed a couple bands: a Dixieland band and a black ties band that played the society circuit. While in college he heard a campus speaker talk about arts management, something that had never occurred to him before. He decided he could be an orchestra manager.
He ended up doing an internship in Erie, PA. From there, he became executive director of the Arts Council of Lima, Ohio. He moved on to Director of the Arts Commission in Toledo. Then he got a call from a person with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival who asked him if he’d ever thought about getting into the theater business.
“I said no but I knew I needed to get into a single discipline. I knew I needed to get out of the arts council business because I’d almost peaked.” A couple moves later and by the time he was 32 he was managing director of the Cleveland Playhouse where he stayed for 20 years before coming to Houston.
With about eight months to go, he’s not quite done making deals and strategizing. He’s still working on the $80 million Vison for the Future campaign, by which the Alley hopes to increase its endowment from $12 million in 2009 to $62 million.
The Alley has already launched a search for his successor. Asked about how someone will come in with all the history and connections he has made, Gladden didn’t seem too concerned. He said he learned along the way, bringing his past experiences (the Cleveland theater flooded once so he already knew about pumping water out of a building) and he watched and listened to the Houston community. He expects the person who follows will do something similar.