Category: Theater

On October 21 1964, the iconic and much-celebrated film My Fair Lady premiered in Hollywood. Sixty years later, the film remains an enjoyable rollick full of catchy songs, but is not a wholly accurate depiction of what linguists do – certainly not nowadays at least.

Linguists are far from the academics who are most frequently depicted in films. It’s normally the white-coat, work-in-a-lab, scientist-of-some-nondescript-sort professors who get to give stark warnings or unsettling research insights to the maverick protagonist. But My Fair Lady is a film all about linguistics (and also class, love and terrible Cockney accents – more on that later).

In the film, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), takes under his wing a Cockney flower seller called Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn). He wagers with his friend and fellow haughty linguist, Colonel Pickering, that he can teach her to speak “properly”.

It seems at first there is no hope but – hoorah! – Eliza finally grasps it, suddenly blurting out “the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” in a perfect imitation of Queen’s English.

Doolittle then dazzles at an embassy ball, the perfect replica of an upstanding posh woman – or, as the film’s title suggests, a “lady” (itself a problematic word which encodes sexist tropes about what should be aspirational and respectable for women).

She even fools a man who has made a name for himself by identifying imposters based on their accent. Though, you may also wonder if she evades detection by barely speaking at the ball, converted into a demure and unforthcoming shadow of her previously forthright, unapologetic and garrulous self.

Professor Higgins: not your typical linguist

My Fair Lady avoids the common pitfall of assuming that the primary endeavour of the linguist is to learn as many different languages as they can, collecting them like stamps (the film Arrival can take note). But it still doesn’t get our job quite right.

I, for one, have never groomed a young, destitute woman to speak “correctly” while moulding her into a “respectable”, posh woman (if only modern academia granted the breathing space for such folly).

Linguists love, celebrate and are constantly itching to understand, study and explore the diverse tapestry of accents, dialects and languages that exist in the UK and around the world. We have no interest in reinforcing any societal ideal for a supposedly “correct” accent, or throwing a grammar rule book at unwitting members of the public.

By contrast, Higgins is repulsed by any accent that is not Queen’s English (which, by a wonderful turn of luck, is also his accent). In the opening number, he has a pop at the dialects of Yorkshire, Cornwall, America, Scotland and Ireland.

But he is particularly dismayed and repulsed that Doolittle, despite being from London, has a strong London accent (or she is meant to at least – I can only imagine Hepburn was instructed to open her mouth as wide as possible for all vowels and caw like a crow if all else fails).

Higgins makes various proclamations which will have you shouting at the telly, “Steady on, Professor!”. In his words:

Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter / Condemned by every syllable she ever utters / By right, she should be taken out and hung for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.

Best not tell him “hanged” is the past tense of “hang” when referring to capital punishment, else he walk himself straight to the gallows.

With a little bit of accent prejudice

The real beast in disguise at the embassy ball is not young, Cockney, Eliza Doolittle. It is misogyny and contempt for the working class that hides behind a mask of maintaining good standards and protecting the English language.

It is no coincidence that women and working-class people (and Cockneys who are often seen as emblematic of the working class) often bear the brunt of accent prejudice.

Accent prejudice is a smokescreen for broader societal prejudice. My Fair Lady seems antiquated and quaint in many ways – like Higgins using a gramophone to play back recordings of Doolittle – but accent prejudice is alive and well.

Women in the UK such as Alex Scott, Angela Rayner and Priti Patel still routinely face criticism, commentary and contempt for their regional accents.

Read more:
Ask or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality

You might think that the film’s lesson is for Doolittle to take on the world with her freshly mastered “standard” accent. After all, she consented to being ridiculed and paraded around like a show dog as she felt her accent prevented her from getting a job in a flower shop. Now, nothing stands in her way.

But people should not have to change their accent to get along – and it is not always possible or even a guaranteed ticket out of discrimination. If we take the accent out of accent prejudice, we are still left with the prejudice – let’s remove the prejudice and be left with the accent.

We need more unapologetically working-class women with regional accents at the embassy ball, but also in politics, academia, in the media and in all walks of life.

In the film, Doolittle ultimately feels she has been used and disrespected, leading her to sour on Higgins. After she leaves, he grows to miss her and wistfully plays back recordings of her voice.

And this is the real lesson for viewers today. Higgins has gotten to know Doolittle as a person and now sees beyond her accent and his own prejudice. The more we hear people with regional accents, the more normal and uneventful it becomes, and the more we will focus on what they say and not how they say it.

A revival of the play “Yellow Face” will make you laugh despite the fact that it examines some hefty topics: cultural appropriation, racial identity and representation in the theater, to name just a few.

The play written by David Henry Hwang centers around a fictionalized playwright named DHH, who has made a name for himself fighting against yellow face — the practice of using white actors to play Asian roles — in the theater. That mirrors events from Hwang’s real life: In the 1990s, he led the protest against “Miss Saigon” for casting a white British actor (Jonathan Pryce) in a lead role, playing a Eurasian character.

In “Yellow Face,” DHH (Daniel Dae Kim) runs into a problem when he accidentally does the same: He casts a white man in a role he wrote for an Asian actor. Instead of admitting his choice, DHH tells the world his actor is a Siberian Jew, and Siberia is in Asia.

The whole thing comes to a head when reporters and the government start investigating Chinese Americans for spying and money laundering. That includes the actor and DHH's father, a wealthy businessman who loves the U.S. – but does the U.S. love him back?

“Yellow Face” first premiered in 2007 at the Public Theater, and the revival opened last week to rave reviews. Hwang and Kim joined Alison Stewart on a recent episode of WNYC’s “All of It” to discuss racial identity, Rachel Dolezal, ambitious flops and more. An edited version of their conversation is below.

Alison Stewart: David, I've heard you describe “Yellow Face” as a mockumentary, like “Spinal Tap.” Some things are true, some things are turned up to 11, some things are false. Let's start with the true stuff. What made you decide to protest “Miss Saigon”?

Hwang: I owed my career to an earlier yellow face protest, people who protested in front of the Public Theater 10 years earlier, which led Joe Papp [founder of the Public] to start to look for an Asian playwright, and that was me. And so when the “Miss Saigon” protests came around, it just felt like someone had paid it forward to me, and I needed to be part of that.

This was all happening when you were starting out in your career. What did you think about the protests, Daniel?

Kim: I remember thinking that they were necessary because, as a young Asian actor, I knew what a dearth of opportunities there were for us. And when you have a chance to play a lead on Broadway, and that is no longer there for these kinds of reasons, it's problematic. At the same time, I also sympathize with my friends, who also said, “Well, when else are we going to be on Broadway in a supporting role, other than in a show like 'Miss Saigon?'”

It represents one of the few opportunities we have to do anything, even in the ensemble. I had some mixed feelings about it, but there's no question that David was on the right side of history there.

It was a big story. The point was made, and it was bypassed. The play came to Broadway. In response, you set out to write “Face Value,” with a white actor cast in the Asian role, and it was originally a farce. What part of it made you think, "Oh, I'll write a farce?"

Hwang: After the protest, which was sort of an early culture wars event, and being caught in the middle of that and arguably being a little bit canceled by mainstream media and opinion, I felt traumatized, and I needed to process that. So I decided to write a comedy of mistaken racial identity about the question: What does it really mean to play a race, to play one's own race? But I wrote it as a door-slamming farce and it became one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.

You say that with such joy, in a way. When you think about it now, would it be a flop now?

Hwang: Oh, yes. I can have some joy about it, because after 20 years, the story has a happy ending.

What?

Hwang: Well, in the sense of taking that concept again – a comedy of mistaken racial identity – and coming up 15 years later with “Yellow Face,” a different way to approach the same idea.

Daniel, in “Yellow Face,” your character is DHH. How would you describe him?

Kim: He is a man who is wrestling with this idea of who his authentic self is and what are the masks that he's developed over the years to try and protect who he really is, and what does it require for those masks to come off? Even though he has the best of intentions, there are other parts of his personality that serve as obstacles to him being his true self.

What are DHH's flaws?

Kim: I would say a little bit of hubris, a little bit of narcissism, a little bit of inability to acknowledge mistakes until the consequences get so high that he's forced to acknowledge them.

Hwang: I feel like Daniel's being a little kind because I'm also in the studio, but I would say a lot of hubris, really, and really trying to protect his reputation as an Asian American role model after making mistake after mistake after mistake in this play.

Are you really self-aware? I mean, when you write something like this, you had to write your own flaws into your play.

Hwang: There are a lot of autobiographical works. It's just that usually, the author doesn't name the main character after themselves. In this case, I found, well, once I did that, I really needed to make him a character. So yes, there are ways in which he's like me, and then there are things that happen because it helps the plot and it helps the character have an arc and some redemption at the end.

Kim: I give David a lot of credit for not making himself a very shiny hero in his own work. He's very human. More than human. I'm not sure what that means exactly.

People get it.

Kim: He presents himself as the butt of many of the jokes in this piece. It takes a very healthy sense of self to allow people to laugh at you openly.

Apparently, this script has 30 minutes knocked off the length from the original 2007 version. Intermission is gone. What did you do?

Hwang: After a certain amount of time has passed, both Leigh Silverman, the director, and I were able to look at the piece with a little more objectivity. We had originally intended it to be an intermission-less evening, but the show was just too long. And I think most of the changes that have happened between 2007 and the '24 version just involved cutting and shaping and polishing. There was stuff that we got rid of and then we didn't miss it.

In “Yellow Face,” DHH casts a white actor to be the lead in his play. It's pre-Internet, so he can't really check him out. Why do you think DHH goes along with the white actor? Why doesn't he just say, "Wait. No, we need to stop."

Kim: I think for him, there's too much at stake. As David mentioned, there’s protecting his reputation, especially as someone who protested the casting of a white actor previously. And again, hubris, this idea that he can get away with it if he chooses to make these choices. I think we've all been in positions where we have to make choices and sometimes the honest choice is the one that comes at the greatest cost.

Well into the play, DHH is having a fight with the white character, and you call him a racial tourist. What does that mean to you?

Hwang: Ethnic tourist. The line is, “You come in here with that face of yours and everyone falls at your feet, you ethnic tourist.” In the play you have the white actor, Marcus. David gives him an Asian identity, which is invented, but then Marcus runs with that and becomes an Asian activist of the sort that David is not willing or able to be at that point in the story. David is saying he just skims the cream and gets to have the advantages without any of the real consequences.

Kim: Which I think is very funny, too, because he's criticizing Marcus in that moment for a mantle he could be taking, and he's criticizing the very creature he created.

It’s interesting because the white actor is saying, “I like being part of something.” "As a 'Eurasian' actor, I can be part of this." When you think about it, is he wrong?

Kim: No, absolutely not. I think that's what makes this play so human and universal. We all want to find a place of belonging. We all want to be validated in some way and just because you're of one particular race or another race doesn't change that need. We all are looking for our home and our community, and I think that's what makes Marcus sympathetic.

Hwang: I would also add it's complicated because his need to be part of the community, or his justification, is based on a lie. He's not actually a mixed-race Asian. Hopefully, it gives the audience stuff to chew over and discuss after the show.

I wrote “Rachel Dolezal” across the top of my notes. She was a white woman who portrayed herself as a Black woman, headed the local NAACP, and there was a big hoo-ha. I'm wondering what you thought about that.

Hwang: It happened after the original production, and so I guess I thought in the original play, “It seems likely to me that this sort of thing is going to happen as we move forward as a more multicultural and more diverse society, and that passing might end up going both ways.” So yes, when Rachel – I don't even know how to pronounce her last name — came around, and there are a couple of others that have come up since, particularly in the publishing world, it's been, I don't know, either gratifying or horrifying.

Kim: By the way, you don't have to not be a member of a particular ethnic group to start using the emphasis on identity and inclusion as a mask. There are a lot of Asian Americans who never cared about this issue until very recently, and then suddenly they've taken up the mantle and the question is: How genuine is that or how much is that just going along with a rising tide?

Then to add another layer to it, in your cast, you have people playing against type. You have a woman playing a man. Marinda Anderson plays Jane Krakowski. Kevin del Alguila plays Ed Koch. How does this set up the audience to maybe understand the play better?

Hwang: Well, in the original production, the casting was essentially binary. It was just Asians and white people. And because society has moved on in some good ways, by the time we get to 2024, we wanted this production to be more inclusive. Then there was the question of: Okay, what does it mean – I mean, now we're pretty used to actors of color playing white people.

“Hamilton” certainly has mainstreamed that, but what will it mean for actors of color to play other characters of color, not of their own ethnicity? We try to be very mindful about the choices that we made. But to me, in a good and fun way, maybe it pushes the envelope a little more and it's something that people can talk about, too.

Daniel, what is DHH having a hard time understanding about his dad?

Kim: Well, I think as a second-generation immigrant or a 1.5-generation immigrant, there are expectations, I think, speaking as a 1.5-generation, there are expectations that we could have of our country that sometimes recent immigrants do not have. What I mean by that is, for instance, my parents, when they came here, they thought of themselves as visitors to this country. They didn't think to question the issues that are problems in the country as much as to say, “We're lucky to be here. Take what you're given and work hard. Put your head down.”

As a person who's grown up with the issues in our country, there's more of a sense of ownership, and I'll just speak for myself. And so when I see problems, I want to raise my voice and say, “This place is not perfect. I 100% choose to live here and love this country, and at the same time, I can be a voice that helps shape this country.”

When I went to the theater on Saturday, I saw a lot of Asian Americans in the audience everywhere I went. What did they get to see?

Kim: First of all, they get to be entertained and I love that most of all because our job, first and foremost, is to entertain. When there are people in the audience who wait for me backstage or outside the stage door and they say to me, "This is the first Broadway show I've ever seen." That is one of the biggest compliments that I can receive because it tells me that we're expanding the number of people who come to the theater.

I think that couldn't be more important for a new generation of theatergoers to know that that's part of the entertainment landscape. I would also say that I think it's really important for young Asian Americans in particular because this show is about our history. And those who don't know who David Henry Hwang is and don't know what the controversy around "Miss Saigon" was, it's important that they do because very often we are considered the silent minority, that we do not speak up for ourselves.

We did have pioneers all throughout history who did that and there are very necessary chapters of our history that are included in this play. By the way, this is not just Asian American history, this is American history. I think if it spurs people to say, “Who was Wen Ho Lee?” then I think we're serving a dual purpose.

Did you want to respond?

Hwang: Well, it's needless to say, we are very fortunate to have Daniel, because there are a fair number of Asian Americans – and people in general – who come to see Daniel. Broadway is looking for new audiences, and that isn't going to happen as long as we keep appealing only to a narrow slice of the demographic. Pieces like “Yellow Face” but also pieces about other communities that have been marginalized in the entertainment world, are so important in expanding our audiences as well as our definition of what constitutes the American theatrical canon.

"Yellow Face" is playing at the Roundabout Theater on 42nd Street until Nov. 24.

On Tuesday, attorneys representing Kenneth Caillat and Steven Stiefel filed a lawsuit in the United States Court for the Southern District of New York against playwright David Adjmi and the Broadway producers of Stereophonic, winner of this year’s Tony Award for Best Play.

The complaint alleges that Stereophonic is an “unauthorized adaptation” of Caillat’s 2012 memoir, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album (which he co-wrote with Stiefel) about his time as a sound engineer (later promoted to co-producer) of one of the most popular albums in history. Caillat and Stiefel are seeking damages and a possible injunction on performances.

Story of the Week will take a deep dive into the suit and its prospects for success. But first, a quick refresher:

What is Stereophonic?

David Adjmi’s drama is about a band comprising two Americans and three Brits. It’s 1976 and they’ve settled into a Sausalito recording studio to lay down their forthcoming album, which takes over a year to record. Seated on the other side of the control panel, we witness their personal trials and professional triumphs as the band becomes increasingly famous. As far as three-hour hyper-naturalistic dramas go, it’s absolutely riveting — made even more delightful by Will Butler’s original music.

The play debuted last October at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway and the similarities to Fleetwood Mac were immediately apparent. “Adjmi’s five-member band is made up of two couples, who are loose stand-ins for John and Christine McVie, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, as well as a Mick Fleetwood-esque drummer,” TheaterMania critic David Gordon wrote in his review, which, like almost every other review of the play, was glowing.

The show transferred to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre in April 2024, opening in time to be considered for the Tony Awards — and boy was it ever. The show received 13 nominations, more than any other play in history. It went on to win five Tonys on June 16, including the all-important Best Play Award, which our team unanimously predicted.

It was several weeks before that, in May, when critic Hannah Gold first noted the similarities between Stereophonic and Making Rumours in the New York Review of Books. She writes, “Caillat also claims that Buckingham once pressured him to record over a guitar riff in the hopes that his next take would be even better. Caillat did what he was asked. Then Buckingham decided he liked the previous take after all, but it no longer existed, so he vented his frustration at Caillat by screaming in his face — an exchange nearly identical to one in the play between Peter and Grover.” Grover is the character played by Eli Gelb in Stereophonic, whose journey from sound engineer to co-producer seems to mirror Caillat’s.

Last week, the New Yorker published an article by Michael Schulman in which Caillat attends a performance of Stereophonic — his very first Broadway show! His review? “I feel ripped off!” In retrospect, this article was a harbinger of the lawsuit to come.

What does the lawsuit claim?

The complaint calls Stereophonic a “flagrant and willful infringement of [Caillat and Stiefel’s] copyrighted work.” It lays out in detail the similarities between the book and the script, often presenting the texts back-to-back in a manner that is uncommonly theatrical (and devastating) for a lawsuit.

In addition to the above-described scene, in which Peter screams at Grover for taping over his guitar solo, the complaint cites the scene in which Holly screams at Grover, “You start paying attention to the tempo and the key and the instruments and give us a little fucking help,” comparing it to a similar line uttered by Christine McVie in Making Rumours: “We want you guys to start paying attention to tempos and keys and tuning and other important things to help us out here.”

There are others, including a scene in which Peter decides to record a bass part for Reg that parallels an anecdote in Making Rumours, in which Buckingham records a bass part for John McVie. There’s the passage about the Sausalito Houseboat Wars, which comes as an odd digression in Stereophonic, and is also a subject covered in the book. The suit also notes references to Tony Orlando and Grover’s use of the phrase “wheels up” to indicate the start of recording — the exact phrase Caillat used during the recording process of Rumours.

Cleverly, Caillat and Stiefel’s lawyers anticipate a potential defense that worked for Adjmi in a suit brought against him by the rights holder of the sitcom Three’s Company concerning his play 3C. A court found that play, a parody of the original sitcom, fell under the “fair use” doctrine, which is meant to prevent rights holders from using their copyright to stifle criticism. “The case of Stereophonic is very different because the show is not a parody or other fair use of Making Rumours,” the suit contends, “Indeed…Mr. Adjmi denies that he used Making Rumours at all, so he cannot claim fair use of the book.”

If Stereophonic had quietly played out its run at Playwrights Horizons and never transferred to Broadway, I wouldn’t be writing about this lawsuit today, because I doubt anyone would have discovered the similarities (off-Broadway is, to my eternal frustration, a passion for a very boutique audience). But again, Stereophonic is the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history and, according to the complaint, “has grossed more than $20 million since opening on Broadway in April 2024.” Caillat and Stiefel obviously want some of that bounty, but the far bigger prize seems to be the potential future of the property.

“The Stereophonic show is harming the downstream market for adaptations of Making Rumours,” the suit contends. It notes that Adjmi has discussed a film adaptation with Deadline, and that Caillat is engaged in “ongoing efforts” to adapt his book into a movie. “A movie version of Stereophonic would not only continue to infringe on Plaintiffs’ copyright,” the complaint reads, “but also undermines the potential for Plaintiffs to make their own film.”

Will we see Stereophonic in court?

It’s certainly possible, but I suspect Adjmi’s co-defendants (a group that includes Playwrights Horizons, John Johnson and Sue Wagner, Seaview, Sonia Friedman Productions, and the Shubert Organization) will see the writing on the wall and quietly seek a settlement. It’s hard to imagine a court injunction shuttering an ongoing Broadway play (as the lawsuit threatens), much less one that has been so laureled. Why slaughter the goose when there’s still so much more gold to enjoy?

Caillat and Stiefel may be satisfied with a “based on” credit and a big fat check. They might even happily consult on the film — for a fee. Because in Hollywood, we really can have “Happily Ever After.”

TheaterMania reached out to the Stereophonic team for comment but has not heard back as of publication. However, responding to the plagiarism allegations in the New Yorker article, Adjmi said, “When writing Stereophonic I drew from multiple sources — including autobiographical details from my own life — to create a deeply personal work of fiction. Any similarities to Ken Caillat’s excellent book are unintentional.”

He’s obviously read it, and “excellent” might make a lovely cover blurb for the second edition.

While similarities in storytelling and songwriting are endemic to the creative process, that kind of unintentional plagiarism is often sorted out by lawyers (poor Anton Bruckner is dead, lawyerless, and in the public domain).

In this case, it’s hard to believe so many exact similarities are the product a creative mind playing tricks on itself. But who knows? Adjmi may choose to keep singing that song.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0[/embed]

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."

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.