Meet Trailblazer Wendy Franz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wendy Franz.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Wendy. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My job now, as Managing Director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, is really a dream job for me. Although I grew up in a small, rural town, I was fortunate to have some incredible teachers who encouraged my love of theatre and inspired a passion for Shakespeare early on. In 7th grade, we were reading “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet,” comparing movie versions and staging our own scenes. I acted and stage-managed throughout high school and with one of my classmates, created a workshop using the nunnery scene from “Hamlet” to help other students discover how they could demystify the language and relate to the characters in Shakespeare.

When I went to college and took my first directing course, I realized that directing was really my calling, that thing that I was built to do. While I was pursuing my directing degree, I was recruited by the design/technology division of the theatre department and stage-managed multiple department productions, including “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Othello.” I worked many jobs at once to put myself through school, selling tickets in the box office, working as a stagehand at the city’s touring theatre, and freelance stage managing in the summers and over the holidays. I worked as an assistant stage manager for summer stock one summer, apprenticed as a stagehand at the Santa Fe Opera another. I loved all facets of working in theatre: hanging and focusing lights, loading in scenery, running microphone cords, helping with costume quick changes, working with performers, and bringing it all together in a cohesive vision as a director. I graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a dual emphasis in theatre directing and design technology.

After college, I was invited by some friends and colleagues to start a new, ensemble-based theatre in Denver, inspired by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. For twelve years, I worked alongside ensemble members and a fantastic team of resident designers and artists, as well as die-hard volunteers producing everything from Eugene O’Neill and Sam Shepard plays to David Henry Hwang, Beth Henley and Jez Butterworth. We all moonlighted running Paragon Theatre Company at night and on the weekends, working day jobs to support ourselves and our families. It was hard work. In the same day I’d work my 9 AM to 5 PM day job, commute from Boulder to Denver, have a creative meeting with the production team for a show I was producing or directing, then turn around and clean the toilets and take out the trash at the theatre before a show that night. I often joke that building and running Paragon was my “grad school.” Through that process, I learned how to create a business plan, write grants and talk to philanthropists; how to recruit, train, and manage people; how to supervise teams and facilitate creative processes; how to source materials and negotiate with vendors. Paragon paid its artists and technicians, but we didn’t have a lot of money and it was important to me to make the experience of working with the company an enriching learning experience for everyone involved. I learned the importance of honesty in working relationships, even when it is awkward or difficult. I made a lot of mistakes. And I learned how to be the kind of director I wanted to be.

In 2008 I landed a day job that aligned well with my interests in the Department of Theatre & Dance at CU Boulder. I worked by day as an administrator, recruiting graduate students and assisting the department chair while still helping run Paragon at night. Paragon closed its doors for good in 2012 and I began freelancing at night, directing and designing sound for theatre productions in Denver and Boulder. In 2014 I had the great honor of producing the Ubuntu African Dance Festival for the department, alongside the incredible instructor and choreographer Nii Armah Sowah. I loved merging my day job with the producing work I had been doing at night for so long.

In 2015 I was recruited by Tim Orr, the Producing Artistic Director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF), to become the festival’s Managing Director, a new position I was fortunate enough to get to help design. For the first time, my full-time job not only invited but required me to wield all of the skills and experience I had gathered over the last fifteen years living a double life as an administrator by day and theatre producer and director by night.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road has definitely not been smooth! And honestly, some of the most important lessons I learned resulted from mistakes I made. As a younger director, I was overly controlling and critical, which I learned through experience had a tendency to stifle the creative instincts of actors. I was incredibly lucky to be working with fellow producers and directors, Paragon founders Michael Stricker and Warren Sherrill, who cared enough to be honest with me, and supported me artistically as I struggled to grow. I had to learn how to bring people along and give them ownership of the process and the concept of the show.

I also had to learn how to delegate and act from a place of abundance. There have been many moments in my career in which I felt deeply burned out and depleted. I tried to do so much myself and it affected my health and mental outlook, leading to a scarcity perspective. One of Paragon’s board members, Chris Chopyak always encouraged us to “think from a place of abundance.” It took me a long time to understand what that really meant. When I learned the importance of asking for help, that many hands really do make the work lighter, I realized that it isn’t about the resources that we had or didn’t have, it was about our outlook. When we approached challenges with optimism and a determination that there was a way through, a way to succeed, help came out of the woodwork. People stepped forward to volunteer, new donors came through the door, inspired by our determination. That taught me that it is much more effective to say, “we have an opportunity to be a part of something inspiring and greater than ourselves, would you like to join us?” rather than “we’re short on people. You should feel obligated to help.” While the objective to recruit help is the same, the tactic is very different. I have had so much more success recruiting people by creating opportunities rather than appealing to a sense of guilt.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
As Managing Director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the second-oldest Shakespeare festival in the nation, I oversee the business operations of the company and assist the Producing Artistic Director with creative planning and fundraising as needed. I head up our human resources and financial operations, as well as our company management and audience services teams. I also direct one of our productions every other year. All of the business operations facilitate our creative and outreach work. Our full-time, year-round staff is only six people, so we all wear a lot of hats.

CSF is a professional theatre company in association with the University of Colorado Boulder. We produce a summer season of four shows in repertory (many, but not all are Shakespeare plays), along with summer camps for kids from June to August. Our outdoor venue, the Mary Rippon Theatre, is a gorgeous, 1,000 seat amphitheater in the heart of the CU Boulder campus, which is one of my favorite places to be in the summertime. Seeing a beautifully produced play under the stars in the Rippon Theatre is a magical way to spend a summer night.

During the school year, we produce our Shakespeare and Violence Prevention school tour, in which professional actors perform an abridged Shakespeare play that highlights violence or mistreatment, followed by in-class workshops where the actors help students role-play alternatives to violence. The school tour work is informed by our collaboration with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at CU Boulder.

I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to direct plays for both CSF’s summer season as well as for the school tour and I find the work incredibly satisfying. I love working with both established professional actors as well as young acting interns and I get to do both when I direct at CSF. This company is very committed to creating a positive, collaborative working environment for all of its artists, artisans, technicians and staff and I love contributing to that effort.

Which women have inspired you in your life?
My mom, who supported a family of five working as a librarian in my small hometown. My high school theatre teacher, Leilani Thornburg, and my AP English teacher, Bea Beyer, both pushed me to challenge myself and supported me in pursuing theatre as a career. They even drove across three states, MULTIPLE TIMES over the years to see plays I directed! One of my first bosses after college, Dana Caraway, taught me so much about the value of kindness, humor, and honesty in management.

Erika Randall and Michelle Ellsworth, both professors in the Department of Theatre & Dance at CU inspire me regularly with their compassionate leadership, artistic virtuosity, and verbal brilliance. My childhood friend, Lindsie Bear, who advocates for indigenous peoples as program director for the Native Cultures Fund in northern California. My many women friends who instill a sense of worth and a love of learning in children as teachers in K-12 schools. Emma Thompson, for her empathy and unapologetic brilliance. I really could go on and on.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coloradoshakes.org
• Email: wendy.franz@colorado.edu
• Instagram: @wendage
• Facebook: @wendyfranz

Image Credit:
Jennifer Koskinen, Steven R. Nickerson, Erin Tyler

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