SEATTLE: In a move that took the local arts community by surprise, Seattle Rep announced last week that artistic director Braden Abraham will leave his post in early 2023 to head up the Writers Theatre of Chicago.
One reason the news was jolting: Abraham has spent his entire professional career at Seattle Rep. A gracious, well-liked, and dedicated collaborator with local and national artists and companies, Abraham had recently signed a four-year extension of his Seattle Rep contact when the opportunity to run Writers Theatre arose earlier this year. Despite the unexpected timing, Abraham told me this week that he is parting amicably from the Rep, and is simply pursuing a fresh artistic adventure in another important, and very different, theatre community—one he’s long admired, he said.
In a written statement, Seattle Rep’s board of trustees chair Nancy Ward said that the board “celebrates with gratitude Braden’s 20-year tenure with Seattle Rep and the diverse artistic excellence he has curated on our stages over the past eight years. We are excited for the next chapter of our artistic journey and have every confidence in a thriving future as we pursue our vision of theatre at the heart of public life.”
In our interview, Abraham said, “There is never going to be a perfect time for me to leave this theatre that I’ve grown up in. This is an opportunity for me to do something new, after being here at the Rep for so long. The mission of Writers that puts artists at the center—that’s a mission that certainly speaks to me.”
A Washington state native, Abraham came to the Rep first as a 25-year-old intern, after working in Seattle’s then-vital fringe scene when he was fresh out of Western Washington University’s theatre program. When the internship ended, he was hired as a Rep artistic associate. “I ran the new-play program under Jerry Manning and directed a couple shows a year—it was a dream job for a young artist,” Abraham recalled.
When the highly respected Manning died suddenly in 2014 from an infection following routine heart surgery, the then-37-year-old Abraham was abruptly thrust into the role of the Rep’s interim leader. A year later, the board of trustees, pleased with the stability and ideas he brought to the company, promoted him to artistic director.
Abraham credits Manning, former Seattle Rep manager Benjamin Moore, and David Esbjornson (who preceded Manning as artistic director) with “grooming me for this job in many ways. When Jerry died it was terrible, hard personally and a big transition for the theatre—a real shock. But I was set up because of how included I had been in the leadership.”
A strong record of producing new and recent plays has been a hallmark of Abraham’s tenure at the Rep. In conjunction with such companies as La Jolla Playhouse, Goodman Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has nurtured and presented early productions of Robert Schenkkan’s dramas about the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (the Tony-winning All the Way and its sequel, The Great Society), the Broadway musical hit Come From Away, and Fannie, Seattle playwright Cheryl L. West’s musical play about Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, among other new works.
In 2021, Abraham initiated 20×30, an ambitious program of commissioning 20 new plays by 2030, “inspired by life in our moment.” The Rep kicked off the project with commissions to Zora Howard, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Sylvia Khoury, Nathan Alan Davis, Amy Freed, Benjamin Benne, and Larissa FastHorse. (The future of the project, Abraham says, lies with the next artistic head.)
Abraham has also tackled modern classics in his own stagings of such plays as Betrayal, The Glass Menagerie, and a deeply stirring take on Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? featuring bravura performances by TV and stage star Pamela Reed and noted Seattle actor R. Hamilton Wright. As Abraham put it, “I love to see how the past talks to the present.”
Under his guidance, the Rep has also taken seriously a community-wide commitment to furthering cultural diversity onstage and behind the scenes. In 2016 he opened the theatre to wider community participation by instituting the Public Works project of summer musicals, which involved social organizations and amateur arts groups from around the Seattle region.
“I was really eager to expand the reach of the theatre, and how we were making work, and who we were making it for,” Abraham explained. “We were one of the first regional companies to borrow the model from the Public Theater’s Public Works series in New York. I just wanted to tie the theatre more to the community, and really reflect the breadth and depth of the talent here.”
After running a flagship, Tony-winning resident playhouse with a current $15 million budget and two proscenium houses to fill—the 678-seat Bagley Wright Theatre and the 282-seat Leo K. Theatre—Abraham insisted he actually relishes the chance to produce in the Writers Theater’s smaller, thrust-configured mainstage and its flexible black box space. “I love the idea of being able to do work in the recently designed building,” he said. “It has an intimacy that really welcomes people and makes theatre social and fun.” (Writers Theatre’s budget as of 2020 was around $8 million; it should also be noted that Abraham will succeed Writers interim artistic director Bobby Kennedy, who stepped in after founding AD Michael Halberstam’s 2021 resignation due to allegations of inappropriate backstage conduct.)
With Seattle Rep’s current managing director, Jeffrey Herrmann, Abraham has faced financial shortfalls and other worrisome fiscal issues during his tenure. Though the Rep maintained a steady presence with online productions and events during the pandemic, and was buoyed by government arts funding when its stages were dark, the challenge of finding ongoing support in a city that has changed enormously has been increasingly difficult according to Abraham. While the population of Seattle has grown by over 20 percent in the past decade, largely due to the explosion of the tech sector, the cost of living and maintaining theatres has also swelled. Artists have struggled to remain in the area, and some smaller companies have closed due to lack of affordable space and other resources.
Abraham expressed dismay that the City of Seattle recently slashed its arts budget (citing a decrease in pandemic relief funding). He also pointed out that with all the wealth generated in the Puget Sound region’s tech sector, some leading local corporations and moguls give little or, like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, nothing to arts and culture organizations.
This disconnect stems from the arts being too often viewed now as “market-based” commodities, Abraham says, a “luxury” rather than an essential amenity worth encouraging and made broadly accessible. Support is essential, he asserted, because it could take years for some of the city’s many newcomers to discover and begin to patronize local cultural institutions. He confessed, “Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that we’ve survived this long.”
The Rep has not only survived; it has remained robust and relevant. As Abraham moves on, and his theatre makes plans for a search to replace him, he can take no small amount of pride in that. His final production is the premiere of the Rep-commissioned play Mr. Dickens and His Carol. Adapted from Samantha Silva from her novel and developed and directed by Abraham, it runs at Seattle Rep Nov. 25-Dec. 23.
Seattle-based critic Misha Berson (she/her) is a frequent contributor to this magazine.
