MU IS HIRING ITS NEXT ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
We’ll keep this page updated throughout the search process!
This page has been updated Feb 14, 2024
We have narrowed down the search for the next artistic director at Mu to three finalists. The candidates will interview with staff, board, and artists at Mu in February. We will have a final candidate identified by the end of February with an announcement of our choice in the spring.
PRojected Timeline
AUGUST: site visit to the Twin Cities and community town hall, first search committee meeting, first draft of job description, competencies discussion and development
SEPTEMBER: personal outreach and marketing for the role, job description posting, recruitment
OCTOBER: search committee meeting and bias awareness workshop
NOVEMBER: conduct first-round interviews
DECEMBER: finish second-round interviews, determine finalists and schedule final interviews and presentation
JANUARY & FEBRUARY: final interviews, board meeting approval, offer negotiations, acceptance
MARCH: announcement
Updates
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Applications for the artistic director role closed Nov 1, and we are thrilled with the dynamic and inspiring pool of leaders who have applied. Thank you to everyone who helped us spread the word about the opportunity! Evolution Management Consultants is currently reviewing resumes and conducting initial interviews. Candidates can expect an update on their application status by beginning of December. We are on track to complete the search by March 2025, as previously announced.
Please contact our search partners, Evolution Management Consultants, at emc@emcforward.com with any questions regarding the search. -
For the month of October through Nov 1, the artistic director job posting was open. Interested candidates had the opportunity to attend a virtual town hall on Oct 8 with Evolution Management Consultants and managing director Anh Thu T. Pham, and the recording was available as a resource to anyone interested. (Watch the recording.)
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The search for Mu's next artistic director is well underway. A search committee composed of board, staff, and artists formed in the beginning of August, consisting of Nonoko Sato, Elizabeth Hang, Josephine Lee, Sara Ochs, Isabella Dawis, and Katie Ka Vang.
Our consultants made a visit to Minneapolis in late August. The pair met with stakeholders across Mu’s community including staff, board, associate artists, artists, students, and audiences. They compiled their listening tour into a report and presented takeaways to the search committee.— Emerging Management Consultants
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You’re invited to a town hall on Aug 26!
Join Mu staff and Evolution Management Consultants—our partner during this leadership transition—on Monday, Aug 26, for a presentation on the artistic director search as well as an open forum for you to ask questions and provide input on the future of Theater Mu.
See you Monday, Aug 26, from 6-8 pm in the Prior Works Community Room (755 Prior Ave. N, Saint Paul). Please RSVP here.
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Theater Mu announced May 15 that artistic director Lily Tung Crystal will step down from her full-time role at the end of Mu’s 2023/24 season to lead Los Angeles-based East West Players, the oldest and largest Asian American theater company in the United States. During her tenure, Mu was named a Regional Cultural Treasure by the Ford and McKnight Foundations, doubled the size of its staff, and doubled its budget from $650,000 to $1.3 million.
Starting August 2024, Katie Bradley will be Theater Mu’s interim artistic director, joining managing director Anh Thu T. Pham in co-leading the Midwest’s largest Asian American theater company. As interim, Bradley will report to the board of directors, produce the 2024/25 season programmed by departing artistic director Lily Tung Crystal, and oversee Mu’s ongoing outreach and community programs. Bradley has worked with Mu since 2006 as an actor, teaching artist, producer, and director, most recently directing the 2024 world premiere of Hells Canyon by Keiko Green.
Tung Crystal says, “I have a deep love of Mu and while it breaks my heart to leave, I am thrilled that the theater, as well as the artists and work I’ve shepherded for our upcoming seasons, is in Katie and Anh Thu’s capable and loving hands while the board launches a search for my permanent successor. I also look forward to providing assistance where it’s needed during this rich time. Mu is so treasured by the Twin Cities and Asian American communities that I hope and trust they will continue to support the company during this exciting transition.”
>> Theater Mu press release on Lily Tung Crystal co-leading East West Players
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MEET THE CONSULTING FIRM
Evolution Management Consultants (EMC) is a new consulting firm working to support the development of a nonprofit sector that is increasingly healthy, inclusive, expansive, and forward thinking. It offers search and strategic planning consulting services to help nonprofits understand their past and examine their present in order to be intentional about their future. EMC places its clients as a top priority by providing a highly individualized and boutique experience throughout our process, which is guided by its core values of authenticity, teamwork, and care. | emcforward.com
MEET THE SEARCH COMMITTEE
ISABELLA DAWIS (she/her) is a Filipina American writer, actor, and musician who creates new musicals, plays, and operas. She has been an artist with Theater Mu since 2005, as an actor, playwright, and music director. A 2023-25 Jerome Hill artist fellow and a 2024 resident artist at the Center for Performing Arts, Isabella is the recipient of the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre for librettists, the Fred Ebb Award for musical theater songwriting, the Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award, and the American Opera Project's Composers and the Voice Fellowship. Her work has been presented and supported by Ten Thousand Things, Theater Latté Da, Tofte Lake Center, the 5th Avenue Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory, Berkeley Repertory Theater, the Atlanta Opera, Weston Theater Company, Ancram Center for the Arts, and Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, among others. | isabelladawis.com
ELIZABETH HANG (she/her) grew up in Minnesota with an interest in theater and music. She’s passionate about making the world a better place, something Mu does by telling meaningful stories that resonate with its audience—which is why Elizabeth brings her curiosity and collaborative mindset to both Mu’s board and the artistic director search committee. In her day job, Elizabeth builds strategic community partnerships and programs at UnitedHealth Group. Before permanently returning to Minnesota in 2017, she worked at the US Agency for International Development, for a member of Congress on the foreign affairs committee, and at Volunteers of America of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
JOSEPHINE LEE (she/her) is a professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota and the editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her books include Race in American Musical Theater and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage. She has been involved with Theater Mu as a dramaturg, consultant, instructor in the Mu Training Institute, past board member, and superfan.
SARA OCHS (she/her) has worked with Theater Mu in several roles since 2003, including actor, director, teaching artist, staff member, grant writer, and associate artist. Her favorite roles at Theater Mu include Mrs. Park in Middle Brother, Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, Mei Li in Flower Drum Song, and Cinderella in Into the Woods. Her performance credits also include productions with Theater Latté Da, the Children’s Theatre Company, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Nautilus Music-Theater, the Ordway, Park Square Theatre, Mixed Blood, and Walking Shadow Theatre Company. Sara is a 2013 emerging Asian American artist award recipient and one of Theater Mu’s awarded artists for the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation’s 2024 Art in This Present Moment program.
NONOKO SATO (she/her) joined the board of Theater Mu in 2019. Theater has always been a big part of her life, encouraged by her parents who were both performing artists in Japan where she was born. She primarily grew up in Chicago where she actively performed with her high school and regional theater companies, and after graduating college, she moved to San Francisco/Bay Area where she performed with and/or served on boards of a wide range of theater companies including Berkeley Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Asian American Theater Company, Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, Actors Anonymous Theatre Company, among others. She and her family moved to Minneapolis in 2017, where she currently serves as the executive director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, the largest state association of nonprofits in the country.
KATIE KA VANG (she/they) is a Hmong American playwright, screenwriter, and storyteller. Her work explores the complexity of cultures & communities, diaspora, dis-ease, and transformation. Her work includes Again the musical, Fertile Grounds, WTF, Hmong Bollywood, 5:1 Meaning of Freedom; 6:2 Use of Sharpening, Fast FWD Motions, In Quarantine, Final Round, and Spirit Trust. Her work has been developed and presented at East West Players, Mixed Blood Theatre, Pangea World Theater, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Theater Mu, Leviathan Lab, Bushwick Starr, Brown University, the Royal Court Theatre, the Walker Art Center, Civic Ensemble, Out North Art House, and more. She is currently a 23/24 constellation fellow from the Center for Cultural Power working with Indigenous Roots. She received the 22/23 McKnight and 19/20 Many Voices fellowship at the Playwrights' Center. She's received support from Jerome Foundation, NET, Knight Foundation, NPN, MRAC, MSAB, and Coalition of Asian American Leaders. She was a member of East West Players 21-23 playwright's group. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Brown University.
Support Mu’s Next Chapter
As we embark on Theater Mu’s artistic director search, we are committed to keeping Lily Tung Crystal’s philosophy of “widening circles,” which has led us to tell more diverse stories from across the AAPI diaspora, to invest in emerging artists, and to work from a spirit of abundance for our community and those we stand in solidarity with. That’s why this August, we are asking for donations to the Lily Tung Crystal Widening Circles Fund, which will support this transition and ensure that Mu’s nationally recognized artistic excellence and community engagement remains steadfast. Will you help us raise $50,000?
MORE TO KNOW
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