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This page has been updated Oct 15, 2024

Interested in being artistic director?

Check out the job posting: Lead the artistic vision of the largest Asian American theater company in the Midwest! Applications are due Nov 1, and the salary is $90,000-$100,000. Theater Mu has partnered with Evolution Management Consultants on this search. Learn more.

Get your questions answered: On Oct 8, EMC and managing director Anh Thu T. Pham held a virtual town hall to discuss the role and the search process. Watch the recording.

If you have further inqueries about the search process, please email emc@emcforward.com.

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

Click on the + to expand each section.

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/her) 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?

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