KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Victor Wishna: You were the Carlsen Center’s first house manager when it opened in 1991—years before it was even renamed the Carlsen Center. Did you say to yourself, “One day I’ll run this place?”

Emily Behrmann: [Laughs.] You know, at the time, I don’t think the thought that I might be in charge ever occurred to me. I enjoyed doing that, I enjoyed working with the volunteers, and being part of the performances was always a favorite thing of mine. I left that job, but stayed at JCCC, and went to our foundation, and did fundraising for many years—I was part of the capital campaign for the Nerman [Museum of Contemporary Art] and the Regnier Center (a technology complex) here on campus.

But then the opportunity arose to come back to the performing arts. I have a degree in music from the Conservatory at UMKC. I studied voice. Even when I was doing that, I felt that I didn’t really want to be a performer, didn’t want to teach; I liked the administrative end of the arts. At the time that was a little unique. They didn’t have a program to teach those sorts of things at UMKC. Very few universities did. I remember talking to my dean about it, that I might want to work in an administrative capacity or maybe get a degree in business, and he was like, “Well, are you going to work in a music store? What exactly are you going to do with that?” It was a little different back then.

Needless to say, I went into [arts administration]. I worked at the Kansas City Symphony for five years right out of college, managing their box office, and then later moved into marketing for them as well. And then I came here and have been at the college ever since.

I love this facility. It really is quite an accomplishment, for the college and for Johnson County. It’s the only thing out here of this scale and we’re the only ones who do this kind of professional presentation of artists from around the world.

VW: The diversity of productions and artists on your schedule is really remarkable. Last week saw Fiddler on the Roof, this weekend is the Jazz Winterlude with some funk, blues, and latin jazz—so you’re shifting smoothly from shtetl to salsa. How does all this fit in with the mission of the Performing Arts Series?

EB: The mission is to be a leader and an innovator in professional presentation of artists, in arts education, and in community outreach. So we do present the professional artists, but we also rent our space to community groups that come to perform. Other departments on campus use the space for presentations, as well as lectures and speakers. We like to feel like we’re part of the college, but also part of the community.

The Series, as it exists in the brochure, is 25 to 40 events a year. Last year, we had 170 events throughout the 12-month fiscal year, which included all those academic events, other groups, other department rentals, etc. It’s a busy facility.

VW: In what ways has the Series evolved in your time here?

EB: In the two years since I’ve been in the general manager’s position, part of what we wanted to accomplish is to broaden the audience that we were attracting with those Series presentations. We had been seeing season tickets declining. We were sticking to classical and chamber music, some theatre, some pop artists, but we were programming to a specific demographic; that demographic was getting older and just wasn’t coming as often. We felt the need to reach out to a broader demographic. We don’t want to disenfranchise the people who have been so loyal—we want to continue to offer things for them—but what about students on our campus, people who live nearby who have young families or are recent empty nesters, that sort of thing? If we’re going to have an audience 20 years from now, we must do something at present to attract that audience.

We did a blues show last year—Hot Tuna Blues—and we had more people here that normally go to Knuckleheads (the well-known jazz and blues saloon in Northeast Kansas City) than we’ve ever had before. It was different for them and it was different for us, but we reached people that we hadn’t reached before. I have patrons from that show call me occasionally to say, “Hey, do you know about this band? They would be great in your space.” It’s opened up an opportunity for us to communicate with a whole different part of the city that maybe didn’t see us as that alternative until we presented programming that they love.

VW: What’s the process for selecting and then inviting performers? 

EB: We have a program advisory committee that’s made up of about 20 to 25 members of the community and staff from around the college—not just in our department, but Student Activities folks, Continuing Education folks, some faculty, and then the members of the community, most of whom attend here regularly or have at some point. They’re a great barometer for me; I can throw out ideas and names of artists and get a reaction that’s very true to how our audience would feel. It’s also a great place to discuss different options. I try really hard, obviously, not to just program for me—it’s not about what I like or don’t like, it’s what our audience has asked us for, what they’ve enjoyed in the past, and a balance between what’s commercially successful and what’s artistically important.

VW: How do you strike that balance—that goal of attracting an audience versus the goal of art to challenge people, perhaps with something they haven’t been exposed to before? 

EB: That is a challenge. It’s interesting how people do put their trust in us. We have a really wonderful track record, and that’s certainly something I can’t take credit for. So for a lot of our regular attendees—if we put it out there, they trust that it’s going to be of high quality, even if it’s something they’re not familiar with. That’s a really great place to be, and something I’m very grateful for.

You do shows like Fiddler on the Roof, obviously, and we struggled with that in our committee, because the feeling was that Fiddler has been done to death—hasn’t everybody been in a production of Fiddler on the Roof? [Laughs.] And we decided, it’s a staple of the Broadway repertoire, and people do ask for Broadway on a regular basis, so let’s try it. And it was, by far, the best-selling show of the entire season. We even added a performance.

But then we also bring in the large orchestras, chamber ensembles, string quartets, and that kind of thing. We may not pack the hall with a chamber group, but that’s okay. There are people who want to hear that and it’s important to continue.

The college is facing challenges in the budget area, and of course, with the Kansas Arts Commission situation, other funding, and the economy, people will often throw that out—why are we doing these things when only a few hundred people are coming? Is that really what we should be doing? Well, yes, it is. But we have to find the balance to help support those things with the more commercial ventures. It is a juggling act.

VW: How would you assess the audience reach and community impact of the Series? 

EB: Our audience is about 80 percent Johnson County residents—that’s been true since we started. But I think we definitely have a place in the Kansas City arts community in terms of what we present. I think we’re a nice complement, a nice addition to that. We don’t like to think of ourselves as a strong competitor to things happening downtown; I think we’re an alternative for people. If they don’t want to go downtown every time to see something, they can come here.

VW: Yes, have you heard the news? We’re living in a golden age for the arts in Kansas City. So beyond being an “alternative,” how do you see the JCCC Series playing its role in the area’s growing arts scene?

EB: I do think we’re part of it, we’ve always had a stake in it. And this [growing interest in the arts] is making people across the metropolitan area aware of our existence and what we do out here. But we really present a much more diverse program than almost any presenter in the city. When you’re talking about things from Chinese acrobats to Fiddler on the Roof to the Munich Symphony to the Joffrey Ballet, we’re the only ones in the area that do that range of programming. Plus, we offer the opportunity for people to see a large orchestra from somewhere else in the world at a venue that’s close to their home that they can bring their kids to—I think that’s important. So, yeah, I do think we have a part in the whole Kansas City array of what’s available, because we just present some things that other presenters aren’t able to do.

VW: So to what degree has the opening of the Kauffman Center impacted the Series—in terms of programming and/or ticket sales?

EB: First, without the Kauffman Center, we—Kansas City—would never have come into our own, we would not be experiencing this golden age of the arts. A rising tide lifts all ships, and we’re a part of that—it’s brought more attention to the metropolitan area as a whole.

That said, I think we have seen some impact on [our] ticket sales. Not so much that they’re lower, but that they happen later. I think because there is so much on offer, and because of the economy, people just wait longer to decide what they’re going to do on a weekend. The week of a performance, sales start to bump, whereas five years ago that might have happened a couple weeks beforehand. I think the Kauffman Center has had an effect on that.

As far as an effect on our programming, that’s hard to say at this point. I mean, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Lily Tomlin (who appeared at the Kauffman Center this fall) have been [at the JCCC] in the past, so I think we are going to be looking at some of the same artists. But, just like we’ve worked with the Harriman-Jewell Series and with Cynthia Siebert’s Friends of Chamber Music, and the Folly Theater—we can talk about, “Well, what are you thinking about for next season? Here’s what I’m thinking about—let’s just be upfront and work things out.”

VW: When the Series began, it partnered with several Kansas City performing arts groups, from the Symphony to what was then Missouri (now KC) Rep. Does that kind of cooperation continue?

EB: I really feel that collaboration is one of the best ways to strengthen what we do, and hopefully other producers and presenters in Kansas City feel the same way. So working with other people in the city and trying to find our way through all those little things that could get very contentious or potentially competitive is the best way to make it all work together, because in the end it is all one big arts community.

We had Quixotic [Fusion] here last year on our season; we would love to have other Kansas City groups here, but what we’ve found is we need them to come out here and do something original that hasn’t already been presented somewhere else in the city. Sales are better for us when that happens. So working with groups for some premieres in our space is something I’m very interested in pursuing in the future.

VW: What are some of your other future goals for the Series—in the coming seasons and longer term? 

EB: I would love to be able to offer a workshop, a clinic, a lecture, some sort of outreach opportunity with every single artist that appears on the series. I don’t know that that will ever be an absolute, but it’s something we can certainly strive for. Because more and more artists are willing to share themselves, they’re willing to work with young students, they’re willing to talk about their process, and that can just be so instructive when you attend a performance and you know that background.

I would also love to see us do some festivals in this space, whether it’s a dance festival, a blues festival—we have a great space for that. With the Polsky Theatre, Yardley Hall, and then our other recital hall and classrooms, we would be able to pull that off easily—you know, with a lot of planning and, hopefully, a lot of money to throw at it.

Because of the situation with arts funding in Kansas, it’s important to show the current administration that the arts do have support in the community—not that they shouldn’t be supported by public dollars, but all the more reason why public dollars should be granted to the arts organizations; they’re part of our culture, part of our community, and part of people’s lives who live in this state. It’s very important to continue that and make at least a part of it publicly funded. That’s what people want; they want to feel it’s available to them.

I love my job, though. My father always said—and somebody famous had already said it, but I heard it from him—“Find something you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

For more information about the Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College visit jccc.edu/performing-arts-series/

By Victor Wishna

Senior Editor, Theatre; Theatre and Features Contributor
Victor Wishna is a writer, editor, and author, among other things. A graduate of Stanford University and the New School's creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. He contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally.

With photographer Ken Collins, he published In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights (Umbrage Editions, 2006), for which he conducted and edited interviews with 61 prominent stage writers including Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and many others. The book won a 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal (www.intheircompany.com).

He has always maintained a love for theatre, as a writer, an audience member, and even an actor, appearing in several community and semi-professional productions. As an undergraduate, he studied acting and playwriting with Anna Deavere Smith, in addition to journalism and psychology (and not engineering or medicine).

After nearly 12 years in New York City, Victor recently returned to his hometown with his wife, Annie, also a K.C. native. When not writing for publication or pleasure, Victor is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest, and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week. Seriously.

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