Jodi Schoenbrun Carter has a long, successful history of leadership, management and fund-raising for theatre in the New York City metro area. Jodi has extensive consulting experience with nonprofit and commercial theatre and have led four award-winning theatres through significant transitions in organizational growth.
She is currently represented off-Broadway with two productions, Morris Panych’s Vigil with Malcolm Gets and Helen Stenborg and Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love Loss and What I Wore with a rotating cast including Samantha Bee, Kristin Chenoweth, Tyne Daly, Lucy Devito, Katie Finneran, Capathia Jenkins, Jane Lynch, Natasha Lyonne, Rosie O’Donnell, Rhea Perlman, Mary Louise Wilson, and Rita Wilson.
Prior to returning to off-Broadway, she served as the Managing Director of Westport Country Playhouse. Working with Artistic Directors Joanne Woodward and Anne Keefe, her responsibilities centered on taking a 75 year-old summer only theatre to year-round programming, working with the board of trustees to clarify a shared vision for the company, and creating a long-term strategic plan for its implementation. She played a key role in raising the profile of the company within the theatrical industry through relationships with the commercial theatre world and funding community. Operationally Jodi was responsible for the hiring and training of a professional staff of 30; expanding producing capabilities; instituting proper fiscal policies; launching an annual fund (raising 3.5M annually); and expanding an intern and apprentice program to a full-fledged educational program.
Prior to her tenure at the Playhouse, Jodi worked with three award-winning nonprofit New York theatres – MCC Theater, The Vineyard Theatre and Signature Theatre Company. She was fortunate enough to be General Manager for several of off-Broadway’s most-acclaimed shows including the original productions of Wit, Fully Committed, Avenue Q, Bill Irwin’s The Harlequin Studies and his The Regard Evening as well as recent revivals of Lanford Wilson’s Fifth of July, Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, John Guare’s Landscape of the Body and August Wilson’s Seven Guitars and Two Trains Running. Jodi was a participant in the commercial transfers of several of these productions.
While at Signature Theatre Company Jodi also served as the Transition & Capital Projects Director. In addition to many of the responsibilities of general manager, she spear-headed Signature’s participation in the planning of a state-of-the-art performing arts center designed by Frank Gehry to be built at the redeveloped World Trade Center Site and was responsible for the development of the Company’s strategic business and financial planning. This plan continues to guide the Company as they move to an alternate site in midtown Manhattan.
For eight years, Jodi served as the President of the Association of Non-Profit Theatre Companies in New York. During this tenure she served as the lead negotiator for several collective bargaining agreements and was key to the successful creation of a new contract with Actors Equity Association specific to these companies.
A graduate of Texas Wesleyan University and the Arts Management Institute of Virginia Tech, she has continued her education through the Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative’s Strategic Perspectives for Nonprofit Managers, several National Arts Strategies seminars, and Commercial Theatre Institute’s 16 week program.
Off-Stage-Right
is a strategic look at the process of working in the theatre – both commercial and nonprofit, and all of the factors that affect the process (with the occasional personal story tossed in). It is a source for all theatre practitioners, and the topics addressed are a necessity theater leaders to be thinking about. Issues explored include: marketing, development, leadership, nonprofit tools and most importantly why the heck to produce theatre in the first place.
Cris-i-tunity
I can’t help but feel that we (and unquestionably I) have entered a new era and that we must shed the past, taking with us what we learned but facing the fact that none of it may be useful in the future. Everyone is more than aware of the global economic turmoil we are experiencing. It is impossible to escape TV reports, newspapers and magazines, internet alerts, etc. that let us know how horrible the situation really is. Even the President of the United States has to be honest that these are trying times, and they are going to get worse. And, no one can really say how long recovery will take or what recovery looks like. We find it difficult to even discuss or if it is recovery or is it more truthfully outright change. The world of theater – especially nonprofit theater – is not experiencing a bump in the road, a correction, or simple challenges. We must acknowledge that we are entering a new reality and must adapt our organizations and, yes, our art to thrive in this new reality.
Personally, I am also going through circumstances beyond my control that are creating a new reality for me. I have lived my professional life in the world of theater – although I had a global perspective in learning, I rarely journeyed outside of the theater world, and today I am faced with a great unknown as to whether I can or will continue to do so, or whether I am supposed to be traveling another path. Without question this personal, national, and global crisis has manifested for myself and I am sure many others a response similar to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief -denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I am sure that dissertations have been written relating grief to life changes or periods of crisis. However, I posit that for life changes or crises there is a sixth stage. A stage in which we take action. That stage is opportunity. Therefore, even though my professional and personal life may be in crisis and the world is facing tremendous social, economic and cultural crises, it is time I emerge from denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance into opportunity. I expect there to be minor/major shifts and bumps in the road, so I will just call this period – Cris-i-tunity.
